Windows 8.1 Unusable for 5 minutes (startup)

[ebilcake]

Having trouble figuring this out, system has just been given to me to figure out another unrelated power off/restart issue which was thankfully easy to fix.

However one thing that that's driving me nuts is every time I reboot the machine once windows loads it takes a further 5 minutes of loading before windows 8.1 is usable, lots of hard drive activity.

It's a half decent system, no SSD drive sadly but it still shouldn't have this issue.

Specs / all stock.
i7 920
6GB DDR3
2TB Storage (2x1TB Raid 0)
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4
GTX 970

 

[ebilcake]

No SSD drive = the system is 'superfetching'.

The best fix is use sleep mode and don't shut down.

Why don't you have an SSD? Your pc is pretty beefy, SSD is the single best upgrade any pc can get! Order a Samsung Evo 850 now, you'll kick yourself for not getting one sooner.

It's not my system, it's friend/colleague's system and it's a quiet day so thought i'd give it some time.

It was losing power/restarting randomly so replaced the PSU, he wasn't even complaining about the startup issue, that was just annoying me.

Anyway, I just replaced the cmos battery and the last three restarts have not had this issue, probably unrelated but still odd.

Think i'll call it today, the main issue was solved anyway. Thanks for the suggestions.