HOW I FIXED MY DELL XPS 8300 QUAD CORE 8GB RAM.
WINDOWS 8.1 Store Update - 2 minute 20 second bootup time with solid state drive - cut down to 25 seconds.
I had a look in the Event Viewer and spotted there were numerous errors within the last hour of debugging the boot problem.
I made two changes based on the errors.
Event Viewer: Error one reported there was a security permission for DistributedCOM and instructed this could be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.
Event Viewer: Error two within the Event Viewer Errors implied there was a USB device error - I then found this thread (http://www.sevenforums.com/drivers/268212-driver-driver-wudfrd-failed-load-device-error.html)
and made the change:
"This worked for me. I did not have to stop the service. Just went to services, found "Windows Driver Foundation - User-mode Driver Framework", changed it to automatic and the warning disappeared. Thank you."
As others, I was making changes over the past hour to fix this problem I've had for months and months. I can only comment that after making one of the last two changes I witnessed that remarkable boot time I had forgotten about.
I should also say that I didn't know there was difference between SHUTDOWN and RESTART, and this is to do with the "Turn on fast start-up" - but one of these changes around this solved it.
RESTART still takes 2m 20s - whereas SHUTDOWN and turning the computer back on takes seconds.
For this reason, the other changes I made before these final two above were:
1: Microsoft Disk Cleanup on the boot disk
2: Updated BIOS
3: Within Power options checked - "Turn on fast start-up" (I had switched this off previously to see if that would fix the speed issue)
4: Ran msconfig.exe and changed the "Number of processors" and "Maximum memory" "Advanced options" under the boot tab to reflect my PC.