I am having some trouble tracking down an issue with a Toshiba Satellite C855D-S5235 laptop. Owner reports that the computer is slow to start. Upon further inspection here is what is happening. Windows seems to start loading fine. The animated flag screen moves along at an expected pace. Then, the blue patterned background that usually precedes the user logon prompt comes up. It says "please wait" for a few seconds and the mouse icon has the little animated circle for a few seconds. This is all normal as far as I am concerned, but then instead of the logon prompt showing up, it is just a cursor on the pretty blue background for about 6 minutes. After that time the user account icons show up and you can log on and use the computer in a very timely fashion. Other than the long pause before user logon, the computer is perfectly fast.
Now, here is what I have done so far.
slaved HDD into a workstation and scanned with Eset and Malwarebytes. Nothing found.
Performed a sector by sector test using HDDScan, Perfectly fine results.
Ran a CHKDSK with sector repair on disk from the workstation. Not really necessary, but a double check anyway. No issues found with the file system or disk surface.
Put HDD back in machine and performed a system restore back a few weeks to supposedly before the issue started. No change.
Updated all drivers I could find, especially the chip set (ATI), video, and networking drivers. No change.
Removed all AV, including using the Norton removal tool as there were some Symantec services hanging around still. no change
Rebooted the computer in diagnostic mode. ALL services and start-up items accessible through msconfig (even MS services) have been disabled. No change.
I also performed an in-place upgrade using a Technet Win 7 SP1 disk, no change after that!
I am out of options other than a re-install at this point. Anyone have any ideas?
EDIT: Another strange thing that I noticed is that after the user logon screen does come up, if I touch the mouse the screen immediately dims as if a power save mode is activated or something. I can turn the brightness back up if I use the FN+F3 keys. Maybe this is because all the services are disabled, but I thought it was interesting.
Also, there is a program called "norton antitheft" installed that will not uninstall. Anyone heard of that?
Now, here is what I have done so far.
slaved HDD into a workstation and scanned with Eset and Malwarebytes. Nothing found.
Performed a sector by sector test using HDDScan, Perfectly fine results.
Ran a CHKDSK with sector repair on disk from the workstation. Not really necessary, but a double check anyway. No issues found with the file system or disk surface.
Put HDD back in machine and performed a system restore back a few weeks to supposedly before the issue started. No change.
Updated all drivers I could find, especially the chip set (ATI), video, and networking drivers. No change.
Removed all AV, including using the Norton removal tool as there were some Symantec services hanging around still. no change
Rebooted the computer in diagnostic mode. ALL services and start-up items accessible through msconfig (even MS services) have been disabled. No change.
I also performed an in-place upgrade using a Technet Win 7 SP1 disk, no change after that!
I am out of options other than a re-install at this point. Anyone have any ideas?
EDIT: Another strange thing that I noticed is that after the user logon screen does come up, if I touch the mouse the screen immediately dims as if a power save mode is activated or something. I can turn the brightness back up if I use the FN+F3 keys. Maybe this is because all the services are disabled, but I thought it was interesting.
Also, there is a program called "norton antitheft" installed that will not uninstall. Anyone heard of that?
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