I have suddenly developed the subject problem after some weeks of running CIS Premium 5.5.195786.1383 db version 9834 and W7HPSP1 64-bit very successfully.
On startup, there is an unusual delay after appearance of the Welcome screen (I have this PC set to autologon) of perhaps 45 seconds. Since I have Verbose logging turned on, what I actually see is Welcome then Preparing your Desktop for some 10 seconds then 28sec of blank/black screen with cursor and then finally the desktop. While the screen is black, I notice there is little/no disk activity vs. other boot ops. Another clue is that if I boot with my network cable unplugged, there is no delay!
But I actually now have Antivirus and Firewall enabled & running, and only Defense+ disabled, and my boot sequence is speedy/normal and does not experience this delay.
Any tips or advice for troubleshooting this would be welcome!
Thanks, I’ve been around-the-world on the “30-second delay” issue; in fact “Clean Boot Troubleshooting” was how I got to CIS, and then I switched-off AV, Firewall, and D+ individually until I definitely ID’ed D+ as causing the delay.
I turned D+ back On and did some more tshooting last night, disabling individual autoruns in the hope that D+ was finding a problem with one of them, but no dice (nor has D+ ever thrown a log entry suggesting trouble).
It would be nice if there were a description here/somewhere about what D+ might be doing in the period of time between Logon and the appearance of the Desktop. In my case it is clearly something related to the network (so strange that there’s no delay with ethernet disconnected).
Yes thank you, I’ve had “Perform cloud based behavior analysis of unrecognized files” un-checked all along. But now I’m looking at “Monitoring Settings” and wonder if “DNS/RPC Client Service” might be something to un-check and try.
After an appalling number of restarts, and meticulous record-keeping, I regret that I have not been able to pinpoint the problem. I decided to start again from scratch doing “clean boot” troubleshooting, and along the way I found a FANTASTIC tool called Startup Delayer which shows the exact start times of all executables on Windows Logon. I’d installed it because I thought "why not just workaround the problem by having cmdagent load AFTER everything else, but this doesn’t work–SD does not delay services startup (nor does W7 let me “delay start” cmdagent). Anyway, the attached screenshot of Startup Delayer shows I wait exactly one minute at taskhost.exe. Could not find anything specific about taskhost.exe except that it’s responsible I guess for loading DLLs which could afaict mean anything.
So I began again, with all Services enabled, to start with disabling all Startup programs (used msconfig.exe) and rebooting to see if I had the delay. Just when I thought I had the issue narrowed to a couple-three programs, my premise collapsed–the delay was back and I’d thought I’d eliminated it and that it was owing to one-or-a-combo of several programs remaining to re-enable.
At this point I was about to jump-out the window, when I noticed the blue icon w/orange orbit in the system tray–there was a new Windows Update that MS wanted to push on me. What the heck, I installed that update. And…the problem has disappeared. Gone. No delay at all at taskhost.exe load.
I await now the next “push” of a Windows Update to see if that is my issue i.e. that the boot delay reappears when the updater is lurking in the background. In the meantime, to any who have read this far run-don’t-walk to get Startup Delayer to see exactly what your system is loading upon logon. To my knowlege there is no other method available to see exactly what loads WHEN and lets you see how long each .exe takes (see attached jpg).
I await now the next "push" of a Windows Update to see if that is my issue i.e. that the boot delay reappears when the updater is lurking in the background.
Well I guess I'm the only one on Planet Earth with this problem, but I had a new experience today and will press-on to document it:
I commenced to install Comodo Programs Manager’s latest beta, 1.3.2.21 over the earlier beta already installed. After some cranking it asked me to Reboot which I did, and lo/behold there was the 1min delay on this reboot. On my verbose autologon I went from Welcome to Preparing your desktop… to a black screen w/cursor and finally desktop, taking a minute to do this where it should have taken only a few seconds.
Then I was presented with the CPM installer (again, automatically) and so apparently the first initiation was merely to un-install the earlier version perhaps? In any case I clicked-thru the CPM screens and this time no reboot was required, and I launched CPM to see that it was indeed the newer version.
Then I re-booted again to see if I still suffered the delay, but I did not, it was back to normal. Not sure yet what to make of this, but it’s feeling maybe as if CIS doesn’t like “pending installations” or maybe it’s just new installations in general. I won’t care about the delay if it only occurs when I install something new…
Did you also test with the following settings disabled:
Block all unknown requests if the application is closed
Enable adaptive mode under low system resources
I did yes “deactivate D+ permanently” and observe that the problem went away. But it appears subsequently, having turned it back-on again, that it may not be D+ per se but rather some sort of interaction with guard64.dll, which is apparently involved with the taskhost.exe invocation (which is where the delay occurs).
So I don’t know that D+ is “to blame” necessarily; but I have only seen the delay when D+ is active.
Dunno those other settings you mentioned but will try those next time I witness the problem, thanks.
If the problem does not go away when disabling D+ by moving the slider down to disabled that is (almost) proof the problem is with guard64.dll. If that is the case disable guard64.dll using Autoruns and reboot and see what happens.
Ah, I wasn’t sure why you’d asked but now I believe I see it: with the slider down guard64.dll is loaded & “at the ready” but with Deactivate Permanently checked then guard64 is gone completely. I have to review my notes to see if I’d ever just done “slider down” but in any case appreciate the info & advice, thanks!