The poster now reports that his problem has disappeared after,
according to my suggestion, he booted in Safe mode.
It does sometimes happen that running in Safe mode lets Windows sort out
its problem. It also sometimes happen that rebooting a couple of times
fixes a problem. Maybe it was the combination of both that helped here.
It will be hilarious if the problem was fixed by a side-effect of
my suggestion, by accident.
This should not detract from the validity of the procedure I have outlined
in my original answer below, intended to detect a troublesome product
which is disabled when booting in Safe mode.
Original answer
Everything works correctly when booted in
Safe Mode With Networking.
In this mode, Windows starts with only core drivers plus networking support,
and especially without launching on startup any third-party applications
or drivers.
Your slow-down is therefore most likely caused by some product that is
installed on the computer. You will therefore need to locate
and disable it.
I don't know if the slow-down is only limited to PHP.
In the rest of my answer I will treat the general Windows case.
But if the problem is only limited to PHP, this might be caused by some
add-on to PHP itself.
The best product that will help in finding a problem with an installed
product is
autoruns,
with which you can turn startup products off or back on with one click.
See this article for information on using autoruns :
Using Autoruns to Deal with Startup Processes and Malware.
Autoruns will display all startup products in its Everything tab.
I suggest to study the list for anything which could possibly ring a bell.
If nothing comes to mind, you could use brute-force by turning off blocks
of products and rebooting each time, refining the number of disabled products
until the product is found.
Once you find the product, it is your choice whether to uninstall it for good, or look for a newer version, or contact the developer.
We are also here for help.
Since you are using a VM with VirtualBox, your VM will automatically sync with the host computer. You will need to disable this time sync feature as written in the VirtualBox manual.
You can disable time sync by doing the following.
- Find your VM's .vbox file on your host machine. (You can do this by right clicking the VM in the main VirtualBox window and selecting "Show in Explorer" or "Show in Finder".)
- Shutdown your VM and confirm VirtualBox is no longer running.
- Make a backup copy of this .vbox file.
- Open the original .vbox file in a text editor.
- Under the
<ExtraData> tag put the following line: <ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled" value="1"/>
- Save the text file and close the text editor.
- Start VirtualBox and your VM.
You should now be able to change your VM's date and time independently of your VM host machine. If you ever want to sync time with your host machine again, remove the line or set the value of this line to value="0"
Best Answer
Is your test system physical or virtual? If virtual, you need to also disable the time sync on the properties of the VM instance, otherwise vmTools or the HyperV integration service is syncing the time on the guest.