Title: Acer Extensa EX215-52 suddenly takes 3–5 minutes to become usable after boot, but SSD works fine in another laptop

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Hi everyone,

I'm trying to diagnose a very strange issue with my Acer Extensa EX215-52 (10th Gen Intel Core i3).

The problem started suddenly. I was watching a movie in Stremio, closed the laptop lid to put it to sleep as usual, and the next day the laptop became extremely slow after boot.

Symptoms

Windows reaches the desktop, but it takes about 3–5 minutes before the system becomes usable.

The desktop wallpaper appears first.

The taskbar takes a long time to load.

During that period, Explorer, Settings, Event Viewer, etc. frequently freeze or become unresponsive.

Once the system finally settles down, it's more usable, but still doesn't feel completely normal.

What I've already tested

Storage

Ran chkdsk /scan

Result: No file system errors, 0 bad sectors.

Windows integrity

sfc /scannow

Found corrupt files but couldn't repair some of them.

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Failed with error 0x800f081f.

Startup / services

Disabled startup apps.

Performed a Clean Boot using msconfig.

No improvement.

Safe Mode

Safe Mode boots quickly.

Taskbar loads almost instantly.

Important discovery

I removed my SSD and installed it into another laptop.

Result:

Windows booted normally.

Taskbar appeared instantly.

No major lag.

Then I performed the reverse test.

I installed another laptop's SSD (with its own Windows installation) into my Acer.

Result:

The same lag appeared on my Acer.

It again took several minutes before the system became usable.

This makes me think the problem is tied to the Acer hardware/firmware/drivers rather than the SSD itself.

Other observations

Windows occasionally shows:

> "Windows cannot find 'GCP.ML.BackgroundSysTray\IGCCTray.exe'"

Intel Graphics Command Center startup entry appears broken.

Event Viewer and MMC have occasionally frozen or reported snap-in errors.

Windows Update currently shows multiple pending updates but seems unable to download/install them.

No AMD hardware is present, despite Windows Update offering some AMD-related driver updates.

Hardware

Acer Extensa EX215-52

10th Gen Intel Core i3

Windows 11 (customized X-Lite build)

My question

Given that:

1. My SSD works fine in another laptop.

2. Another SSD also becomes slow when installed in my Acer.

3. Safe Mode is fast.

Would you suspect:

Intel graphics driver?

Chipset/storage driver?

BIOS/firmware issue?

RAM problem?

Some hardware device causing boot-time timeouts?

What would be your next diagnostic step before I resort to a clean Windows installation?

Thanks in advance for any ideas.