slow boot time with new buiild...

Hello everyone.
I have a new build with AMD FX 8320, gigabyte GA-990fca-ud3 MB, OCZ ARC 100 240gb SSD, 600 watt PSU, 4 gb ram and windows 7 32bit

Installed windows and loaded drivers from gigbyte disk. Boot time is 55 seconds which seems really slow. It gets to the windows screen at about 35 seconds. then it's about another 20 seconds from the welcome screen to the desktop.

Here is what I ahve done to fix this:

~made sure RAM was in the correct slots (1 and 3)
~made sure SSD was in SATA slot 0 and set to AHCI
~made sure SSD was set to be the first boot devvice.
~ Made sure to set the desktop background to something other than a solid color (seems weird, but apparently it can slow down boot time)
~tried a basic startup which did nothing for boot time
~tried boot up with no DVD burner and it did nothing for boot time

I called gigabyte and they asked me if during windows installation I set the drive controller to IDE or AHCI and I said I couldn't remember. He said to re-install windows and make sure, but want to do that only as a last resort since I already have already updated windows and a couple programs loaded.

Is there a way to check what driver I loaded during windows installation to know if I pointed to the wrong one before I re-load windows? Seems like there should be, but the dude at gigabyte didn't think there was.

Any other advice?

First thing I'd do is run a benchmark on your SSD from inside Windows.

~35 seconds to the Windows screen is longer than it should take, seems like something is slowing it down before it even gets to Windows. And as far as I know, there's no configuration option in the Windows installer to pick IDE or AHCI.

You might also reset your bios to default and try again, and maybe look for a 'quick boot' option somewhere.

here is the benchmark test:

Check in your BIOS to see if quick boot is enabled.

rbico said:

here is the benchmark test:

Click to expand...

I see no option for that.

There are probably thousands of how to...

...how to make windows faster and/or boot faster.

You can just about rest assured that windows is looking for confirmation on some hardware or hardware setting in the motherboard bios. I have looked at many many speed up windows and windows decrease booting time write-ups. This author seems to have a better handle on where and what to look for and actually showed decreased times on his setup. Makes big sense to me.


How to Make Your Windows PC Boot Faster

RGone...

Thanks RGone. I thought it might be hardware or driver related. I will read through that link and report back.

I got it down to about 45 seconds, but that is still pretty lame considering I don't have any secondary hard drives hooked up yet

Okay this is weird. I booted up this morning and it took 12 seconds to get to the desktop. I was SO HAPPY!!! The welcome screen never even appeared and the "starting windows" screen flashed so quick that I couldn't read it.

To make sure it wasn't a fluke I rebooted and it immediately went back to 45 seconds to boot. WTF???!!!

You don't set IDE or AHCI when installing Windows, no idea what the guy was talking about.

The drivers you installed are also very likely very out of date, head to the gigabyte site and download the latest drivers for your components. I assume you have updated your video card drivers and such as well? Open up your device manager (Start->Right Click Computer->Manage->Device Manager) and see if anything has an ! next to it where a driver could be missing.

Can you open up msconfig and post a screenshot of your startup application list?

Janus67 said:

You don't set IDE or AHCI when installing Windows, no idea what the guy was talking about.

The drivers you installed are also very likely very out of date, head to the gigabyte site and download the latest drivers for your components. I assume you have updated your video card drivers and such as well? Open up your device manager (Start->Right Click Computer->Manage->Device Manager) and see if anything has an ! next to it where a driver could be missing.

Can you open up msconfig and post a screenshot of your startup application list?

Click to expand...

I'll check the drivers. I actually

I just rebooted with "enable boot logging" checked and I see there a bunch of drivers not loading or missing. I will start there and post my results.

MSCONFIG startup is very small.

so something happened (I did something wrong) and I lost all networking. microsoft couldn't find any "network hardware" and no matter what I tried, I could not get it back so I decided to do a fresh install of windows.

Now that I have a fresh install, my boot time is about 32 seconds. I am happy with that. what I did differently is that as soon as windows was loaded, I updated all of the drivers from the gigbayte website (thanks for the tip). I may poke round to shave off another second or two if I can, but even if I can't I can move on with my life now, lol.

thanks for your help everyone!

One other tip for installing drivers:
https://code.google.com/p/snappy-driver-installer/

Excellent tool to download and update your drivers past what are listed on the websites

^^^just avoid downloading Ilivid with that link... install ilivid and oddly you will be livid

Be very careful when using third party driver updater utilities. They are usually loaded with malware. Pay close attention to the install process and make sure you uncheck any unwanted bundled programs.

By the way, it's very easy to reconfigure Windows for AHCI if you forgot to select that option in bios before installing the OS. There is one simple and safe registry edit that needs to be made, reboot into bios and then choose AHCI in the SATA mode section. Then boot into Windows. Bingo!

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=313676

BobbyBubblehead said:

^^^just avoid downloading Ilivid with that link... install ilivid and oddly you will be livid

Click to expand...

There aren't any options like that for it, or even an installer, it is literally just an interface with a lot of drivers built in.

Screenshot

Hey, rbico, did you look into the event viewer? Sometimes it proves useful. There is a path, I think, like application and services log\microsoft\windows\diagnostics-perfomance\operatiopnal. There you can find warnings, errors, etc. You are interested in the Event ID 100's - boot times and Event ID 10X's - what went wrong during boot. Hope it helps
http://www.nextofwindows.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/event_viewer_boot_performance.png