back to article HP users moaning over 10-minute login lag during 'Win 10 update'

A number of HP Inc device owners are complaining of seeing black screens for around five to 10 minutes after entering their Windows login information. They appear to be pointing the finger of blame at Windows 10 updates released September 12 for x64-based systems. One, a quality update called KB4038788, offered a whopping 27 …

  1. UKHobo

    I have no complaints at all here with my HP Elitebook 8470p. Oh wait, I'm not running Windows

    1. RegGuy1 Silver badge

      Windows? Does anyone still run that crap?

      1. Geoffrey W

        No. Not one single person. Windows is dead.

      2. pwingert

        Yes some us have to

        Yes my work requires it.

    2. Aitor 1

      windows + crapware

      windows + crapware from Hp.. just do a clean install.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Upvoted for sensible behavior.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    I have no complaints at all here with my HP Elitebook 840 G3

    1. EddieD

      Lucky sod.

      In March, HP pushed out a BIOS update that killed the motherboard on over 100 of our HP 840 G3s, and their customer service is crap to the point of insanity - one of the contracted engineers they eventually sent was only able to replace 3 motherboards in a day and was an utter prima donna. The contrasts with Dell customer service are night and day - Dell send polite, punctual, efficient chaps who get the job done.

      At the time I was in hospital, bewailing my lot, but when I got back I found my poor colleague had it far, far worse than anything I had.

      And that was just one incident - there have been others

      Unfortunately the equivalent Dell on HE list is over £300 pounds more expensive, so we can only get them in special circumstances.

      Bugger all to do with the 10 minute login black screen, but I need a good rant of Saturday, gets me set up for relaxing the rest of the day.

    2. big_D Silver badge

      Nor my Spectre x360.

      I did have one problem with a Fujitsu Lifebook at work, but that was a conflict between W10 update and TrendMicro - just 1 machine from over 100. A de-install and re-install of TrendMicro solved the problem.

    3. Hans 1

      HP Elitebook 850 G1, here, and I often get issues with the trackpad not responding for about 10 seconds, occurs randomly ... I have high hopes for KB4038788 and my system will reboot soon to finish installing just that ... should I allow it ? It is a clean install ...

  3. Mark 85

    HP is notorious for fiddling with the Windows install with all of their proprietary BS. Since no other manufacturer is affected, I would suspect it's the HP junk causing the problem. At one time, all the Windows Updates to HP PC's seem to have come through some HP website. I don't know if that's true anymore, though.

    1. pwingert

      Toshiba is having issues too

      My c50-A is running at 80on average for the last three days.

  4. anody

    I have an older HP and it ground to halt

    The Superfetch and some other services had to go - I had hard drive activity at 100%.

    I wish the MS did not push Cortana that hard; I have no use for it, and they seem to stubbornly re-enable it with the upgrades.

  5. cb7

    A few HP's here

    But running clean install Win10. No HP bloat. Up to date with all Win updates. No issues to report.

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: A few HP's here

      I can only recommend clean installs as Windows 10 is installed in 10-15 minutes or so, and it seems to pick up all the drivers from WU very well. And afterwards you don't have to uninstall Winzip, McAfee and some useless HP stuff.

      Several new HPs still have the 1607 version, so to get it up-to-date you'll first need to let WU download 1703 version (couple GBs) and the upgrading takes many times longer than a clean install.

      Also consider not installing the HP EFI Diagnostics package, since it uses so much space on that 100MB (?) EFI boot partition that e.g. 1703 (Creators Update) fails to install until you remove the diagnostics. Pretty stupid from MS to use a paltry 100MB partition these days, and stupid HP because they haven't published an advisory or even recognised the need for one.

  6. kain preacher

    I remember HP telling that there was bug in windows XP that caused a clients computer not to go to sleep and the problem was MS fault not HP. I was thinking if that's the case then why did you send me out to replace the MB . Looking at the notes this was the third MB that was replaced for this issue. I have a feeling the HP guy was selling me a load of BS.

  7. fobobob

    Yay HP software

    At one point, my company purchased a stack of 8 cheap-o HP laptops; envy, i think.. whatever was cheap at Best Buy... thankfully, our procurement procedures have improved drastically with new management.

    Within two days, four of them had become effectively unusable due to some bug in HP's Welcome software (only modest CPU usage, but it was causing Windows itself to shit a brick). Needless to say, it was uninstalled from all of them in short order.

    1. J. Cook Silver badge

      Re: Yay HP software

      last place I worked for had that mentality. "Oh, we need a computer for [x]. I'll run over to the local office supply store / best buy / warehouse club and pick up something 'appropriate'."

      which is why we had a mix of HP pavilions, Dell optiplexes (those were the new ones!), eMachines, and the odd Gateway 2000 here and there. Made for fun times getting parts for them when they broke, and dealing with complaints about performance- windows 2000 ran fine on them. Windows xp... not so much, unless you turned all the shiny off and killed some of the more egregious services after doing a format and fresh OS load from official MS media.

  8. CFtheNonPartisan

    Windows complexity reminds one of 100% of all government employees having to agree on what to order for lunch, and from where. Their management seems to think the more complex the better. I see Windows is an Intel-Microsoft arrangement to force everyone to buy newer more power computers every few years, just to run Windows.

  9. Florida1920
    Headmaster

    Use the 10 minutes wisely

    To shop for a different OS, on your non-Windows smartphone.

    1. kain preacher

      Re: Use the 10 minutes wisely

      And you think that will solve HP issues of making fucked software that causes problems ?

      HP: Your coders are incompetent idiots because we pay peanuts. Lets switch OS to make the issue go away/

  10. TVU Silver badge

    "HP users moaning over 10-minute login lag during 'Win 10 update'. Like watching a black screen dry (literally)".

    Windows 10 = Windows Covfefe. Simples, innit?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The fault is caused by an HP driver not Windows 10 update. Had it a few times recently and recreated fault. Can't recall name of driver causing the problem, but was a wireless related one.

  12. joed

    I would not be surprised if the LAN/WLAN switching struck again. Easy test - just plug the Ethernet cable and see if the process completed nearly instantly.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Has Microsoft been letting 'Insiders' do QA testing for Windows updates?

    Also, did Microsoft even talk to its OEM partners to sort out any potential problems beforehand? OEM machines have fairly standard configurations, it shouldn't be that hard to test stuff.

    I posit that OEMs aren't very friendly with Microsoft ever since the Surface was launched. Also, the disaster known as Windows 8 had made them lose quite a bit of money, they're still (secretly?) bitter at Microsoft.

    Seems like it's the 'ship it and we'll fix it along the way' philosophy working its magic again.

  14. Bloodbeastterror

    In case anyone reading this is suffering, the (temporary?) solution is to use services.msc to disable App Readiness.

    1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge

      A better solution:

      Create a logon task that runs 'net stop appreadiness' followed immediately but 'net start appreadiness'

      It doesn't need disabling, just restarting

      Oh, and while sitting on the black screen, press Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up task manager and from there you can run 'net stop appreadiness' to get to the desktop straight away.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Ctrl-Shift-Esc

        For those who aren't good with shortcut keys, you can also put a shortcut to taskmgr.exe on your Windows desktop, or a convenient location on the taskbar.

  15. Azipharel

    No problems here

    HP does have an attitude issue. From execs to software and hardware. But on this occasion, I had no problems.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    SaWaaS

    Sitting around waiting as a service

  17. davidp231

    Took my HP Stream 7 tablet at least 5 attempts to install the 32bit version of that particular update. 15GB free space, clean install of Home (upgraded to Pro via Win8.1 key), so no HP gubbins getting in the way - yet it was a pain in the arse to get installed.

  18. pwingert

    Toshiba C50-A has same issue as hp

    My Toshiba c50-A has been running at 80 to 90% since I installed the update on Thursday. System host processes seem to be responsible for a majority. I can't even move the mouse. Sql server telemetry is using 10-20% every three minutes for about 5 minutes.

  19. FozzyBear
    Devil

    Pffft. 5-10 minutes waiting.

    Work configured Lenovo thinkpad Windows 10 installed. Do a reboot and watch win 10 as it cycles through applying updates, removing updates, attempting updates , rinse and repeat This morning login time topped out at 45 minute.

    Still provided enough time to grab a coffee and catch up on the goings on over the weekend with colleagues.

    I remember the good ol' days of whining at windows 7 taking 1-2 minutes to reboot.

  20. Shane McCarrick

    8770W here- fully updated- no issues encountered.........

  21. HPCJohn

    I got it

    Andrew, thanks for this article. I have an HP SPectre x360, which is a lovely laptop.

    Following the update to version 1703 I got this issue. I had not idea it was a common issue till I read the article. I also had no idea that a ten minute wait was the answer - I tried various thing like trying to start MSCONFIG etc. and it was only by trial and error that I left the laptop idle and foudn that it started working after a period of time.

    So come on HP and Microsoft - get this sorted out.

  22. imcdnzl

    App readiness / HP support link

    As someone else says disable app readiness service as a workaround. Official HP forum link is at https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Boot-and-Lockup/SOLVED-For-everyone-who-is-having-black-screen-after-login/td-p/6318990/highlight/true/page/2

  23. imcdnzl

    App readiness / HP support link

    There is a hotfix at https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Boot-and-Lockup/SOLVED-For-everyone-who-is-having-black-screen-after-login/td-p/6318990/highlight/true/page/17

  24. Number6

    Normal?

    I thought that was normal behaviour for Windows 10. For reasons beyond my control I have to run a Win10 machine and if I have to reboot it then it takes 20 minutes before it's usable again. On the plus side, I do have a Linux VM installed and do as much as I can in that.

    1. kain preacher

      Re: Normal?

      Are you serious ? No that's not normal more than 2 minutes there is an issue some were.

  25. DaveMellor

    HP Pavillion and Windows

    OMG slow, it is a crawler.

    Just returning to Windows laptop after 3 years using tablet (says retired Windows developer).

    After XP it has been all downhill. Just trying to configure new Windows 10 with Skype. New Skype is awful so reverted to classic interface. W 10 till a pile of crap. HP additions are also very dubious.

    The damn thing has already screwed up my login - and keeps forcing me into Outlook and Edge (of course I use Chrome and GMail). Time to dual boot methinks. Although at my age I just want quick and simple!

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