Vista boot problem

July 26, 2009 7:43 AM

My Vista installation has a major problem. Every time I update my next two boots take in excess of half an hour. My best guess is that the problem lies in the creation of restore points. Has anyone else experienced this problem and how did you fix it?

I am using Vista Home Premium SP1(32-bit), on a dual-core 64-bit athlon processor and 2 gigs of RAM.

posted by Bonzai to Computers & Internet (22 answers total)

The restore point is created before updates are downloaded.

Most of the updating takes place during the reboot.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:56 AM on July 26, 2009

This isn't a problem -- this is the actual installation of the updates occurring, and is exactly what you should see. Nothing to worry about.
posted by ellF at 8:21 AM on July 26, 2009

Response by poster: I can't believe half an hour to reboot is normal especially since sometimes the update is nothing more than adding new signatures to the anti-spam detector.

Does everyone running Vista experience this?
posted by Bonzai at 8:40 AM on July 26, 2009

"This isn't a problem"

I think what you mean is... "This is not indicative of a larger problem." Things like half hour re-boots are the reason that Vista finally pushed me to purchase an iMac.
posted by robverb at 8:41 AM on July 26, 2009

It's a stupid way to manage an operating system, but yes -- this is the same experience that I have on my machine(s).
posted by ellF at 8:43 AM on July 26, 2009

Response by poster: *sigh*

Thanks guys. At least I can stop trying to fix the problem.

Insane but correct.
posted by Bonzai at 8:47 AM on July 26, 2009

Sorry, that is insane and incorrect. My Vista machine is now a year old and has never experienced 30 minute reboots applying updates. I usually reboot about once a week. The slowest an update has taken has been maybe two minutes.

What you need is a diagnostic showing you what's actually happening while you boot. I haven't had to do that on Windows in a long time, so I don't have a solution at hand. Here's some info on enabling boot logging in Vista that might be a good start.

You may also want to try rebooting with anti-virus software disabled to see if it makes a difference. Bad anti-virus software can make a machine slower than anything.
posted by Nelson at 9:27 AM on July 26, 2009

i'm with nelson on this. my year or two old vista machine does not behave this way. when i install an update it might take a couple of minutes longer to restart but certainly nowhere near a half hour.
posted by phil at 9:33 AM on July 26, 2009

This isn't a problem -- this is the actual installation of the updates occurring, and is exactly what you should see. Nothing to worry about.

That is absolutely incorrect.

The only thing that should take that long to install is the installation of a service pack. If your updates are taking a very long time there could be several things wrong. I would probably look for system processes, applications or hardware causing slow disk access, but it could be lots of other stuff like malware, crummy antivirus (looking at you, Symantec Endpoint Protection) or even a bad or corrupt installation. There's not too much information to go on here, but if you think it's Restore Points causing a problem, one thing you could try is disabling them the next time to see if that helps (backup first, of course. You can use the built in Windows Backup tool or Clonezilla to image your hard drive). YMMV, I am a Windows sysadmin, but I am not your Windows sysadmin.

Also, with respect to Windows Defender signature updates, you don't have to do a restart for those.
posted by tracert at 9:57 AM on July 26, 2009

This sounds nuts, even for Vista, and I'd be inclined to suspect the antivirus software too, but I wonder what % of your disk space is used?
posted by Good Brain at 10:00 AM on July 26, 2009

tracert, I disagree that this behavior is "absolutely incorrect". Depending on the specific patches being installed and the performance of the hard drive, a 30-minute installation isn't that unusual.

What I did not notice in the original post is that Bonzai is experiencing this when the only updates being installed are Windows Defender definition updates, which -is- fishy. I'd suggest running Ad-Aware and CCleaner, defragging the drive, ensuring that there's at least a few GB free, and seeing if the problem persists. This may well be an issue related to something else, if it's truly occurring when no update is actually being installed.
posted by ellF at 10:46 AM on July 26, 2009

Response by poster: Hope!

I am using Avast! for virus protection but I'm willing to switch.

ALL updates take 1/2 hour or more.

I have 40g free on a 180g drive, so I'm at about 75% capacity.

I run Ad-aware about monthly and I have Spybot-SD running resident.

I'll try CCleaner and next time there are updates I'll disable Avast! and the Spybot resident agent before rebooting. I'm behind a router/firewall so I should be safe.
posted by Bonzai at 10:55 AM on July 26, 2009

Avira and Avast are my standard AV recommendations; I'd be very surprised if either of these are causing the delay you're describing. When the boot-up is happening, is the display sitting on the "Installing updates..." splash screen, or is it someplace else? Is the hard drive light showing that the disk is thrashing during these long delays?
posted by ellF at 10:57 AM on July 26, 2009

Response by poster: The installing updates screen is over and gone fairly quickly. There is nothing on the screen it's just blank.
posted by Bonzai at 11:05 AM on July 26, 2009

Response by poster: I'm going to install SQL Server Lite to force an update, I'll let you know about the thrashing. See you all in about an hour.
posted by Bonzai at 11:09 AM on July 26, 2009

Response by poster: I guess SQL Server Express (not Lite) doesn't count as an update so nothing happened.

Possible related datapoint, every time I reboot (not just updates) shortly after windows comes up the whole thing freezes for about 3-4 minutes. I'm pretty sure that isn't normal either.

I did a full virus and two different malware scans and everything came up clean. My last defrag was 4 days ago.

Does anyone have Bill Gates home phone number, I really think he should be working on this.
posted by Bonzai at 11:44 AM on July 26, 2009

Gates has retired.

When's the last time you defragged your system drive?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:13 PM on July 26, 2009

Response by poster: 4 days ago.
posted by Bonzai at 12:30 PM on July 26, 2009

Response by poster: (It's on the scheduler)
posted by Bonzai at 12:31 PM on July 26, 2009

if you restart in safe mode does your computer still lock up? if not, i would use msconfig to check for unnecessary/malicious applications and services that are configured to load on start up.

there is also a possibility of a driver issue. are all of your drivers are up to date? i would check the vendors websites not just windows update.
posted by phil at 1:59 PM on July 26, 2009

That's not normal behavior, unless you have a really old computer.

I would check the event logs and see if anything is coming up. I would suspect that you probably have a failing hard drive. Or a nasty infection of crapware of some kind.
posted by gjc at 3:21 PM on July 26, 2009

Response by poster: I'm going to add an update and close this out for the sake of anyone with a similar problem in the future looking for a solution. I finally resolved this yesterday.

I eventually submitted a Microsoft incident report and was assisted by a very patient person from Microsoft.

After several steps to check for hardware problems he finally has me run

sfc /scannow

which found corrupt system files but was unable to repair them. He then had me update my system from the installation disk which replaced the corrupted files and solved the problem.

My boots after an update are now only a few minutes, no longer than at any other time.

Thanks for everyone that pointed me to ideas, successfully or not.
posted by Bonzai at 10:06 AM on September 16, 2009 [1 favorite]