Windows – Long 20 minute startup/boot after Visual Studio Install

Yesterday I wanted to get back into a bit of XNA so I installed Visual Studio 2012 Express Desktop and Visual Studio C# 2010. I also installed the XNA framework (which needs Games for Windows on windows 8) and got it working with 2012 following these directions. I did the restarts whenever it told me. This is when it started to just hang on a black/blank screen (no cursor) right after the windows balls logo thing (spash screen – right before log in screen).

I did not think anything of it the first time and I went about doing a ccleaner run of files and a registry clean up (I did back up the registry). I also went through a windows update as per normal routine. Restarted again for the updates and noticed it hanged again.

I tried merging the registry from the ccleaner backup but it gave me a error accessing the registry. I was able to merge the registry today so all is good there.

I have also run through a Advanced Startup options Automatic repair but it said it was unable to repair.

I have uninstalled Visual Studio 2012, 2010, XNA, and Games for Windows and boot times still take 20 minutes. The computer seems to work fine once it is loaded up. Before, I thought the culprit could be Visual Studio or Norton since it gave me a Error 8506, 421; I uninstalled Norton last night and reinstalled today.

My computer is a Asus K-Series Laptop (K55N more specifically K55N-RHA8N29).

What should I do to get my computer back to normal?

There is a similar issue here: Windows 8 stops booting after installation of Visual Studio 2012 Desktop

EDIT:

I did install Team Foundation Server which is Microsoft's source control but I could not get that to work as it crashed Visual Studio when opening projects. I uninstalled Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio 2012 and then reinstalled VS 2012. I got TortoiseSVN instead and set up the context menu commands.

Also, taking a look at msconfig: On the startup selection it has Selective Startup with Load system services and Load startup items checked (I did not change). Should it instead be Normal startup? — Just read when you do the Advanced Troubleshoot (probably same as Advanced Startup options) it changes from Normal to Selective. I have changed it to Normal but have not restarted to see results.

EDIT 2:

I just looked at the bios updates for my laptop and saw this in the changelog: "Fix the bug that System will show black screen". I might need to update my bios although I am unsure of the current version. Also, I am not sure how to update but researching it now. Edit: Unfortunately, it looks like my bios is up to date. The download is for BIOS 217 and mine says 217.

Edit 3:

After running xbootmgr (suggested by magicandre1981) I have a nice log file of what is going on. I wish I knew how to analyze this data better. From the log, I learned that the Winlogon Init Phase took 25 minutes. I could use some assistance analyzing this log file better to get more information.

Here is a download of two traces I did: **removed*

Edit 4 (4/5 – 6:23pm):

I was going to try to delete the troubled font by hooking up the hard drive to another PC but it was not recognized on a Windows XP machine with my SATA to USB adapter. I put the hdd back and booted but the notebook and it went super fast like it used to. I turned it off and back on and it went back to being slow. Just thought I would share the glimmer of hope.

Edit 5 (4/5 – 8:21pm):

I finally got rid of that f…. pesky font. For future reference, the font was Kozuka from Adobe. It took a lot of work to get rid of it. The OS seemed latched on to it and did not want to let go. I downloaded NexusFont and got rid of the whole family but there were still two files left (KozMinPro-ExtraLight.otf, and KozMinPro-Regular.otf) that stuck around in the System Font folder only visible through the UNC path convention (\\computer-name\c$\Windows\Fonts). Had to use a cmd command(rd /s c:\$Recycle.Bin) to empty the recycle bin and use a del command to finally get rid of the files. Boot times are down to about 7 minutes which is better but not back to normal.

Here is a couple traces from the 7 min boots: **removed*

Clarification (8:47pm) – I shutdown and started up and it is going fast as normal now. Not saying it is solved but possibly. Traces are essentially restarts and still 7 minutes but without trace it takes about 3 minutes to restart (not sure how long when normal). Shutdown and Turn back on seem to work lickety split.

Edit 6 (4/6 12:03pm):

Good news, fast-boot trace and normal boot trace were fast as ever. I disabled Unlocker from startup and turned off the services for Spybot and Teamviewer. Wamp is the only NON-Microsoft service that isn't disabled (for some reason it does not re-enable the service when it starts up). I have not tried plain restart since last night.

Download both here: http://db.tt/Kw2HVBqi