ColemanV

Hi Cicely! Thanks for getting back to me on the issue, but meanwhile, Mr. Scannan's ideas proven to be a good direction to solve the problem. I hope you forgive me if I won't try to reproduce the mess described in my initial post, but in case if I encounter some oddity in the future I'll be sure to follow the steps in your reply when seeking a solution. Just to be clear I don't blame you guys for something going haywire, I'm well aware of that PC configurations can be wildly different and the same applies for softwares as well so you guys obviously can't be prepared for every single possibility that your software could encounter. To quote the classics "sh*t happens" so no worries ;) Thanks again for the reply, much appreciated ;)

Thank you for confirming that you didn't just had a bad day, you really are "this way" by default. Man, the level of ego on you, wow. I'd say you could get off your high horse and take a look around, but given that you're already got high on "power" by being a moderator and having the ability to make opinions disappear if you don't like them - or in this case "graciously allowing them to exist" to show how "great" you are - I'm sure asking you wouldn't have any effect. Staying with the car analogy, the things you mentioned that you can do with your car is all stuff that is basic knowledge - at least around here - that is required for you to have a driver's license. Around here you don't allow you to have your exam until you've demonstrated that you know these things and can handle them. There is no such mandatory course /exam for operating a PC, therefore an average user won't be aware of these things. Beyond that, this issue I had is more equal to having the car stalling each day at starting up couple times before continuing to operate in a normal fashion. Meaning there is no warning light - as in no error messages - and nothing else to work on as everything the owner could've checked on that basic level was already checked, like the fuel, the fuel pump, fuel filter, fuel lines, spark plugs and so on. Its easy to have the know-how if you working with something on a regular basis in your regular environment. As soon as you encounter a problem thats outside your area of expertise and not in your familiar environment you'll see that it isn't that easy to find your way to a solution. That doesn't mean only because you've got knowledge makes it right to talk down on others. Granted with your abuse of power position in this little corner of the internet you surely can do that, I'm just not the kind of guy who lets it slide without a word. Respect is earned, my dude, and so far you earned that only for your technical knowledge, in every other area however... well let's just say you've got room to improve.

No offense, but who the heck was blaming someone else? o_O Like what are you on about even? I just made a couple general statements. You keep saying this "you gave no info" thing but never specified anything you'd want as info, so there is that. No you clearly aren't an "average user" otherwise you wouldn't be a moderator here and wouldn't be aware of said waringings/recommendations for the reasons I mentioned above. Average users doing their thing until they stumble across a problem, you know being users and all, using their devices. A dad working 9-to-5 with 2 kids, a house construction and daily chores won't be thinking about "-gee, I wonder what warnings microsoft posted today, or what recommendations could be there on the forums of a utility software I use maybe three times a year with two clicks each time". That is just a statement, a fact of reality, it isn't seeking to blame you for knowing stuff or any such thing. For the sake of clarity I "just simply" popped on to the forums after looking for how to even post here for half hour, and I was under the impression that I did post this issue in the DB section of the forum - apologies if I didn't - but let's just say this forum format is less than ideal in terms of being user friendly or easy to navigate. I did go to the DB section and was trying to look for similar issues, but all of the info I found was for older versions of DB and I was pressed on time, so I found it not to be a prudent course of action to start reading months if not years old posts that may or may not lead to anything similar I have encountered. I feel like you've got a chip on your shoulder because someone had the audacity to show up here looking for an explanation to the problem, and pointing out the reality side of things. I did thank you for the initial reply, and I did thank you for pointing me the direction that ended up being the fix for my problem, so I'm not sure where the attitude came from in your case - maybe it've been miscommunication or you having a bad day or whatever - but if that's how you react to an actual average user, maybe you should reconsider that moderator position :P (BTW I couldn't help but to notice that my previous reply got edited by you,..) Be well friend and again thanks for everything. At the end of the day you did help me ;)

Well its Windows 8.1 so there goes the Win10 theory :P (BTW Its kinda odd how its a requirement to register to this forum to give all sorts of details but it doesn't seem to be displayed where it could be relevant, I sort of assumed upon registration that I fill out all them details so people don't need to guess about the major components and OS of my rig ) Hindsight is always 20/20. I'm so glad Microsoft issued a warning (<---yes that is heavy use of irony :P ), only it doesn't reach the average user. Its kinda similar to blaming a driver for getting T-boned by a truck "coming out of nowhere" and after the fact pointing out that behind the branches and leafs of that tree on the right, there was a traffic sign indicating the danger. Warnings posted at places that doesn't reach the "target audience" is as good as not posting anything. I get it, from your perspective its like "-Well the warning have been there, I saw it, so its obvious" therefore its trivial for you that people supposed to know about it, but for anyone not visiting microsoft platforms for browsing warnings and such - aka the average user - that warning for all intents and purposes, simply doesn't exist. Its the same way about the recommendations of this forum. An average user - if everything goes smoothly - will never-ever visit this forum, therefore will remain unaware of the recommendation posted here, much the same way I didn't need to post this issue until said issue came to be. As for DB being already uninstalled, nope. It was on my tray when the supposedly failed restoration was completed, and I was able to run the program upon checking. Regardless I reinstalled it and after that I was able to uninstall it properly. Anyway, thanks for pointing me to the right direction for solving this issue ;)

So I've done a system restoration and as per usual I've had a "the system restoration was unsuccessful" message, BUT Driver Booster is back to its state prior to running it for the first time and like magic, my rig's boot-time returned to below 60 seconds agan. Now my only issues are that my Firefox claims that it can't update itself for some reason, Dirver Booster's uninstallation doesn't work and wants me to "obtain the latest version via the IObit website" or something and who knows just yet what else is messed up. At least this've proven my theory of updating the drivers with Driver Booster caused the insanely long booting. So now I guess I'll try to use Uninstaller to get rid of Driver Booster and manually handle the issues that may pop up as a result of this little "adventure". EDIT: trying to manually uninstall Driver Booster or using Uninstaller yields the same error message. I guess I'll try to reinstall it then and then uninstall. <--- success on uninstalling like this. In any case I've got no idea how updating an audio / USB driver can result in 5+ minutes of boot time prior to even getting to the sign-in screen.

Thx for the reply. Sorry, I didn't knew what kinda details would've helped. I've updated all the drivers as the headset's support didn't specify audio drivers, so I figured maybe they've also meant the USB drivers, since the headset operating on USB and I've got a bad experience with system restores, screwing up a whole bunch of settings, and I'm not even sure if that feature is on or off. Gonna have to check it tomorrow (currently on my laptop)

So recently I've got my first USB connected headset for my rig, but the mic didn't register sounds, so I got in touch with the support of the maker of it, and they recommended a complete driver update just to be sure, even though I've told according to Windows, the audio driver is up to date. Since I've had only good experiences with IObit products I figured this'll be the perfect chance to try out Driver Booster. Downloading and installing had no issues, it did its thing, updated my drivers. Then next time I started up my rig I was sitting there for like 5minutes and 30-ish seconds until I could do anything, spending the majority of this time in front of the windows loading screen. Initially I figured maybe the updated drivers needed a "finalizing" time and it'll be okay by the next time. It wasn't. Since I made no other changes to my system prior or after installing Driver Booster I figured it must've been the source of my troubles so for testing this theory I've uninstalled it. Still the five minute boot time persisting. So what gives? Even in the days of using a Pentium I on 133MHz a five minute boot time was borderline nonsense.