Windows 8.1 Pro x64 UEFI very slow boot and shutdown

I may have found the solution to why my new ASUS laptop became extremely slow to shutdown after upgrading to Win 8.1. Took me 2 days of almost constant debug but found that disabling the Qualcomm Atheros Bluetooth driver dramatically reduced the shutdown and start up times to where they are now as fast or faster as they were with Win 8.

Speed reduction has remained after many start up and shutdown cycles.

Thanks for this. I had a very slow shutdown but after doing a system restore to just before the Qualcomm drivers updated fixed the issue.

8.1 would HANG UP ON SHUTDOWN on my PC because of the Qualcomm Atheros AR3012 Bluetooth drivers that installed with my KILLER WI-FI card.  If you have a Killer Wi-Fi card and/or Atheros drivers you probably have the same problem.   Go into Device manager and uninstall them and then when  you restart 8.1 will update the drivers with generic Microsoft 8.1 drivers and you are good to go.

EXCEPT THE NEXT TIME YOU USE WINDOWS AUTOMATIC UPDATES IT WILL REINSTALL THE QUALCOMM DRIVERS.  Watch for that and when you see those automatic updates "HIDE" THEM while we all wait for Qualcomm to get it together and come up with the right software.

Dan and Rangerat..

I have been trying to precisely identified what changed that corrected my computer after about 4 days suffering the same thing you have.  My improvement happened after a Tuesday, a day of the week that Microsoft offers fixes (I think).  I noticed that the upgrades were not happening upon shut down and I found a place to install upgrades before shutting down.  I also started to review the installed Knowbase upgrades that "might" help your situation.  Right now my short list is KB2887595, KB2538242, KB2267602, KB 2883200, KB2903939, KB2887595, KB2884846.  These upgrades "gradually" made it onto my computer, and each time it functioned better. However, none of these were installed during that magic moment that my computer began to start up extremely well.  There are places in the windows log where it desired to install these, but it took that "manual installation" to finally get 21 upgrades to install.  I have already forgotten what buttons I pushed (control panel, .... upgrades... install now...).   But that is what worked.  There are also logs that you can read and there are directions out there how to reach them.  Finally, after initially not opting to be part of the Microsoft Customer Improvement, the day before the improvement, I changed that option and accepted to be part of the Microsoft Customer Improvement program which sends anonymous operating data to MS.  As frustrated as we can get, Microsoft does seem to have an excellent operating system this time.  There is something peculiar about 8.1 Professioinal that affects some machines. 

Check your update installation log.  If it is blank, try updating manually and see it helps.  If it does, we will have a better idea towards a solution to this problem.

Fortunately for me the "magic" solution was to disable the Atheros Bluetooth drivers. Immediately boot up 10 seconds and shutdown 10 seconds on a laptop with HDD not SSD.

No problems with updates before or after.

The speed for boot and shutdown with the Win 8 as delivered was also 10 seconds. It was after the full win 8 update and then win 8.1 upgrade that everything slowed down to about 5 minutes or more to shutdown. No problems any more.

Dan and Rangerat..

I have been trying to precisely identified what changed that corrected my computer after about 4 days suffering the same thing you have.  My improvement happened after a Tuesday, a day of the week that Microsoft offers fixes (I think).  I noticed that the upgrades were not happening upon shut down and I found a place to install upgrades before shutting down.  I also started to review the installed Knowbase upgrades that "might" help your situation.  Right now my short list is KB2887595, KB2538242, KB2267602, KB 2883200, KB2903939, KB2887595, KB2884846.  These upgrades "gradually" made it onto my computer, and each time it functioned better. However, none of these were installed during that magic moment that my computer began to start up extremely well.  There are places in the windows log where it desired to install these, but it took that "manual installation" to finally get 21 upgrades to install.  I have already forgotten what buttons I pushed (control panel, .... upgrades... install now...).   But that is what worked.  There are also logs that you can read and there are directions out there how to reach them.  Finally, after initially not opting to be part of the Microsoft Customer Improvement, the day before the improvement, I changed that option and accepted to be part of the Microsoft Customer Improvement program which sends anonymous operating data to MS.  As frustrated as we can get, Microsoft does seem to have an excellent operating system this time.  There is something peculiar about 8.1 Professioinal that affects some machines. 

Check your update installation log.  If it is blank, try updating manually and see it helps.  If it does, we will have a better idea towards a solution to this problem.