Windows 7 will boot, but hangs a minute or 2 on flashing cursor

spookyneo

Member
Hello all,

I am in need of your expertise. I've been having an issue since few weeks and I'm running out of idea. First of all, it is not an issue with EasyBCD. I have tried EasyBCD to help me resolve the issue, but no luck. I'm posting here to, hopefully, gets an answer to my issue. The issue is that after the POST, a flashing cursor will appear for a minute or 2 and then Windows 7 x64 will eventually boots up. While the cursor is flashing, my hard drive LED is steady and sometimes flashing, as if the BIOS was looking for Windows. Before getting into what I have tried to fix this issue, let me tell you how it started.

Back in November, my main hard drive (which contains a partition for Windows and another for my data) had issues. It was dying and I got a replacement by Western Digital. My hard drive is a WD Black 500GB. My replacement hard drive did not arrive in time and my hard drive died. Few days before it died, I created a Windows backup of my Windows partition only, not my data. When the replacement hard drive arrived, I restored the Windows partition to the new hard drive. However, Windows would not allow me to restore my backup made by Windows Backup & Restore, I had to use Acronis (which supports Windows backups). Since this time, I've been having the flashing cursor issue. Windows will always boot, so it is not a critical issue, but it is annoying to wait a minute or 2 more than it should take.

I have tried EasyBCD to modify/recreate BCD. I have tried bootrec and all its switches numerous times. I have tried many tutorials such as http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ht/rebuild-bcd-store-windows.htm.

Nothing fixes this issue. Of course, I made sure in the BIOS that my hard drive is the first boot device. All my other hard drives are deactivated in the boot sequence. The fact that my hard drive LED comes on right after POST let me think that the BIOS is looking for Windows...but I don't know why it takes so much time to finds it.

I don't know if the issue appears because I restored only the Windows partition or because I used Acronis to restore my Windows backup.

Anyone have clues ?

Thank you !!

Guillaume.
 
If you download this MS document
Windows On/Off Transition Performance Analysis
It will give the full details of what's happening at each stage of boot/shutdown, and might help you find what's causing the delay at the precise point where you have the problem.

There's probably a French version somewhere if you poke around.
 
Last edited:
If you download this MS document
Windows On/Off Transition Performance Analysis
It will give the full details of what's happening at each stage of boot/shutdown, and might help you find what's causing the delay at the precise point where you have the problem.

There's probably a French version somewhere if you poke around.

Thank you Terry. A french version is not important, I can read very well in English :smile:

I have done some traces and here are my results in XML. Very interesting...

timing pnpSystemStartDuration="1269"
pnpSystemStartEndTime="13829"
pnpSystemStartStartTime="12559"
pnpBootStartDuration="8223"
pnpBootStartEndTime="8266"
pnpBootStartStartTime="43"
postBootDisturbance="9223371919645"
postBootRequiredIdleTime="10000"
osLoaderDuration="73509"
bootDoneViaPostBoot="-1"
bootDoneViaExplorer="107210">

Looking at the osLoaderDuration, it is very, very long. It should be less than 3 seconds, according to the documentation and results I have found on Google. It looks like it is my cursor flashing issue. According to the documentation, the OSLoader Phase happens right after the POST and before the "Loading Windows" screen. This fits perfectly my issue. Unfortunately, I am not able to investigate which process is causing this delay of 73,5 seconds.

I have also performed signtools on all the drivers that are loaded during startup. Several drivers comes up with this error :

SignTool Error: A certificate chain processed, but terminated in a root certificate which is not trusted by the trust provider.
SignTool Error: File not valid: C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\sptd.sys

The following drivers have this issue :

C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\sptd.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\vidsflt.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\vmci.sys
C:\Windows\system32\drivers\vsock.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\amd_sata.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\amd_xata.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\vididr.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\tib_mounter.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\tdrpman.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\snapman.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\fltsrv.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\AtiPcie64.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\ahcix64s.sys

As I can see from the results of SignTool, they fail to pass the test because their certificate is not valid anymore (expired in 2012). Should this impacts the boot ? Remember that my boot issue started right after a restore of a Windows backup...not after installing a new software/device/driver.

Thanks for your help :smile:
 
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