Fix Windows 11 Skipping the Spinning Dots Animation at Boot

Quick fix: The spinning dots animation appears between firmware POST and the sign-in screen. Modern UEFI firmware with fast boot enabled hands off so quickly that Windows skips the animation entirely. To restore it, disable Fast Boot in UEFI and turn off Fast Startup in Windows power options.

On a slower PC, you used to see the spinning dots while Windows initialized. On your new build or after a UEFI firmware update, the screen goes from manufacturer logo straight to the sign-in prompt. The animation isn’t broken — it’s being skipped because boot is too fast. For most people that’s fine. For diagnostics (or just preference), restoring it is straightforward.

What controls the boot animation

The spinning dots are drawn by bootres.dll during the kernel-load phase, between the firmware handoff and the Windows logon prompt. The animation is timed to the kernel’s init duration: if the kernel takes long enough to start the Session Manager, you see at least one rotation of the dots. On a fast NVMe + recent CPU + Fast Startup enabled, the entire kernel init can finish before the GPU has a chance to draw a single frame.

Two settings affect this: UEFI Fast Boot (which skips POST device enumeration) and Windows Fast Startup (which loads a partial state from hiberfil.sys instead of a fresh boot). Disabling either one slows boot enough that the animation reappears.

Method 1: Disable Windows Fast Startup

1. Press Win + R, type powercfg.cpl, press Enter.
2. Click Choose what the power buttons do in the left sidebar.
3. Click Change settings that are currently unavailable (the link with the shield icon).
4. Scroll to Shutdown settings and uncheck Turn on fast startup (recommended).
5. Click Save changes.
6. Restart the PC. The dots animation appears for several seconds during the boot.

Fast Startup uses a partial-hibernate technique: when you shut down, Windows saves the kernel state to hiberfil.sys and reads it back on next boot, skipping kernel init. Disabling it means a full boot every time — slower, but you see the full animation sequence.

Method 2: Disable UEFI Fast Boot

If Method 1 isn’t enough or you want the animation visible during reboot (which doesn’t use Fast Startup anyway), disable Fast Boot at the firmware level.

1. Restart the PC and enter UEFI/BIOS setup (F2, Del, F12, or Esc — varies by manufacturer; check during POST).
2. Navigate to Boot or Advanced Boot Options.
3. Find Fast Boot (sometimes labeled Quick Boot or Ultra Fast Boot) and disable it.
4. Save and exit (typically F10).
5. Boot. POST is now slower (you may briefly see device enumeration text), but the Windows animation has time to render.

Fast Boot skips many firmware-level checks. Disabling it adds 2–5 seconds to POST. The total boot time is longer but the animation is visible.

Method 3: Verify with bootres.dll trace

If you’ve disabled both Fast Startup and Fast Boot but still don’t see the animation:

1. Open elevated Command Prompt and run bootres.dll integrity check:
   
   sfc /scanfile=C:\Windows\System32\bootres.dll
2. Open msconfig, click the Boot tab, click Advanced options, and uncheck any custom display settings that may be overriding the boot UI.
3. Run bcdedit /enum {current} in elevated Command Prompt. Find the quietboot option. If set to yes, change it: bcdedit /set {current} quietboot no.
4. Reboot.

The quietboot BCD value can suppress the animation independently of Fast Boot. Some OEM images set it to yes by default.

How to verify the fix worked

• Restart the PC (use Restart, not Shut down → power on, since Restart bypasses Fast Startup regardless).
• The spinning dots appear for 2–5 seconds after the manufacturer logo, before the sign-in screen.
• Boot time (measured from power button to sign-in) increases by 5–10 seconds total — that’s the cost of seeing the animation.

If none of these work

If the animation still doesn’t appear after disabling Fast Startup and Fast Boot and confirming quietboot is no, your GPU might be initializing too slowly for early boot output — common on discrete GPUs that initialize after CSM in the boot sequence. Set Primary Display Output in UEFI to Integrated Graphics if your CPU has it (so Windows can render to iGPU before dGPU is ready). For laptops with hybrid graphics, the animation may render to the wrong display — check whether you have a second monitor attached and whether the boot output is sent there. Persistent absence on otherwise normal hardware usually indicates a custom OEM boot image; check for a BIOS update that mentions boot display improvements.

Bottom line: The animation skips when boot is too fast. Disabling Fast Startup, Fast Boot, and quietboot adds enough time for the dots to render. The trade-off is a few extra seconds of boot — minor on modern hardware.