Slow startup - Black Screen - Windows 10(and others)

I have had a couple of computers to work on that had an unusually long startup time. They both had dual display adapters(video cards) that are supposed to switch automatically from the lower powered one to the higher powered. That wasn’t happening as it was designed to and it caused the computer to start very slowly, sometimes minutes just to get to the desktop(home screen with all the icons). Once this setting was changed, it lowered that startup time to as low as eighteen seconds.

I’m listing below the info that sorted out this issue. In short, I changed some registry entries to the same settings, updated some drivers, and changed the “fast startup” and seems to have completely cured the situation.

The ULPS settings

ULPS stands for Ultra Low Power State for GPU's or graphic card adapters. It is this setting that causes some computers to hang, especially at start up and coming out of sleep and other wake up states. In the case of the computers that I was working on, I went to the registry, Run > regedit, and then search for ULPS, or “EnableULPS”. Change the value from “1” to “0” and save to disable it. I also had done the other steps mentioned below of removing the display adapters in the device manager and then reinstalling after a reboot with the newest adapter drivers available. Once that was done, the computers start very fast.

Credit to the info I found.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/win-10-booting-delay-caused-by-amd-graphic-driver/4446c13a-5498-407e-ac94-2e56692c1c53

“Uninstall your current GPU drivers & restart, Install the latest corresponding gpu drivers from the amd website & then disable ULPS in the registry...

open regedit as admin & search for "EnableULPS" this should find a DWORD 32bit value & change it from 1 to 0 & reboot...”

https://www.tenforums.com/general-support/10457-fix-windows-10-booting-black-screen-17.html#post899058

The devices the original poster had were similar to what I was working on.

- Intel HD Graphics 3000

- AMD Radeon HD 7400M

EnableULPS - In our case disable, but copy and paste into your search in the registry to quickly find the keys. I’ve listed below the ones that were found in my systems. Once you find these keys, change the ones have have the “EnableULPS” and change the value by double clicking or right clicking the properties and set it(them) to “0”.

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0001

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0001

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\amdkmdag

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0001

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\amdkmdag

Slow startup - Black Screen - Windows 10

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/win-10-booting-delay-caused-by-amd-graphic-driver/4446c13a-5498-407e-ac94-2e56692c1c53

Uninstall your current GPU drivers & restart, Install the latest corresponding gpu drivers from the amd website & then disable ULPS in the registry...

open regedit as admin & search for "EnableULPS" this should find a DWORD 32bit value & change it from 1 to 0 & reboot...