Windows 10 Reauthentication and VPN Settings Dialog Hangs

Question

My Windows 10 LTSB (1607) computer appears to be working fine except for the following things. They all seemed to start this weekend after an unexpected power disruption, so I think they are all related:

1. When I attempt to go to the VPN section of Settings (no matter how I try, even if I was just there), the dialog window stops responding (mouse changes to the spinner) for between 60 and 90 seconds. When I attempt to connect a VPN, I waited for five minutes before giving up. I can connect to the same VPN just fine from other devices (I'm pretty sure it's not a target system issue).
2. When I lock my computer and attempt to reauthenticate, sometimes it succeeds immediately, sometimes it takes exactly two minutes (120 seconds) and then succeeds, and sometimes it takes longer.
3. When I attempt to restart the machine it usually hangs (but not always) during the shutdown process and I have to power off or hard reset it.
4. I've attempted to reinstall network and video drivers. Both hang when they say they're 99% complete.
5. I cannot RDP to the machine--it times out every time.

Other notes: This is not your run-of-the-mill computer slowness problem. This is an i7-6900K with 32GB RAM and a 512GB M.2 SSD, and is snappy with every other operation I've tried. It happens with multiple user accounts on this machine.

Anyone have any idea what might be the problem?

Answer 1

After a day of frustration, tens of reboots and hours of waiting for hangs and hard resets, and one glorious shutdown BSOD, I was finally able to fix this issue. I'm not sure exactly what it was in the end, but in case anyone else has this happen to them, the steps I took may help them narrow it down further:

1. In Task Manager, go to the Startup tab and disable anything that isn't absolutely necessary. In my case, this was LastPass and a bunch of ASUS stuff.
2. Kill any unnecessary processes (also in Task Manager).
3. Stop and change unnecessary services to 'Manual' start. For me this included several ASUS services, LastPass, and NVidia stuff.
4. Uninstall any associated programs. For me, this included several ASUS programs that came with my motherboard, NVidia graphics drivers, and LastPass.

It took me several rounds to get this stuff done, as things kept hanging, and at one point my mouse quit working, but I was finally able to do it, and everything seems to be working now. I suspect ASUS--their software appears to be the most poorly written, and I've had issues with their stuff in the past.

I'm leaving the NVidia and ASUS stuff uninstalled because everything is working just fine without it and I have no need to tweak my motherboard LEDs, fan settings, etc. now that they are where I want them.

As a side note to ASUS: Your AI installer/uninstaller app doesn't work AT ALL without a mouse. That is just plain stupid programming and is not acceptable for any kind of software, especially installers. LastPass had a similar issue, but fortunately it was only to select optional stuff.