Can anyone help with a slow boot problem on Windows 8/8.1, please? This concerns an Asus Zenbook. It's about 15 months old, and has always booted very quickly. Now, all of a sudden, it takes 5 minutes to get beyond the Windows logo screen.
I have tried all the standard things (clean boot, turn off Asus Fast Boot, etc), up to and including Resetting Windows. No good: on either Windows 8 or 8.1, it still takes 5 minutes. I have looked at the Windows System Log, and the delay occurs
right at the beginning of the Boot process. E.g., on the most recent boot I see as the first 3 entries (note, I'm in Europe, so dates are dd/mm/yyyy, and times are in 24-hour clock):
Information 10/03/2014 19:36:23 Kernel-General 12 None The operating system started at system time 2014-03-10T19:36:23.490074300Z.
Information 10/03/2014 19:36:23 Kernel-Boot 30 None The firmware reported boot metrics.
Information 10/03/2014 19:40:26 FilterManager 6 None File System Filter 'FileInfo' (6.3, 2013-08-22T11:38:45.000000000Z) has successfully loaded and registered with Filter Manager.
and you can see the 4-minute gap between the 2nd and 3rd entries. That's where the delay always comes, though sometimes the "reported boot metrics" doesn't show.
A little later in the procedure I do always get the following warning:
Warning 10/03/2014 19:40:31 Kernel-PnP 219 (212) The driver \Driver\WudfRd failed to load for the device ACPI\ACPI0008\2&daba3ff&2.
However because that comes later I can't see how it can be causing the problem, and I suspect it's an independent issue.
The machine appears to run normally once booted. It is protected against viruses by Windows Defender. I have looked at many posts on this and other fora on slow boot, and tried everything suggested, but none of the solutions have worked. I have also looked widely on the web for problems with the File System Filter but nothing relevant comes up. The machine is under warranty, and could be sent back, but that would be a serious pain so if there is a solution I can implement I would much prefer to do so. Thank you for looking at this.
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