SOLVED Slow boot time (W7) with new SSD - Performed boot trace, need help analyzing it

[Skoll_21]

Hello! I hope I'm posting in the right section

Yesterday I bought a Vertex 4 128GB SSD (FW 1.5) and installed Windows 7 on it with AHCI activated in the BIOS. I later attached an HDD as a storage disk and it's connected to a SATA port which is set to IDE. I followed one of those SSD guides on how to disable lots of stuff on the computer to optimize the SSD usage. I also have all drivers updated

My motherboard is SATA II only so I can't get the SSD to its full speed but my booting time is longer than when my boot drive was a laptop HDD... The "Starting Windows" screen takes 1min 10secs. I don't think this is supposed to take so long but after that it's really quick loading my user/desktop and starting up programs.

I searched a bit for this kind of issue and some people said it could be the optical drive or the storage HDD slowing up the booting time. I disable those devices from the boot order on the BIOS and even disconnected them from the motherboard but there were no improvements (at least not noticeable; maybe a few seconds?).

I've run a boot trace with the storage HDD and optical drive connected but I can't really tell much from it so I'd like to know if anyone could look it up for me. I've uploaded the file to Dropbox so just let me know if you want to take a look at it and I'll PM you the link.

BTW, I don't know if this affected the results of the boot trace but when the computer started up the first time after running the boot trace command, it BSOD'd. I then tried starting up in Safe Mode but it got stuck so I turned the computer off and booted up again and it went all the way through to the desktop and complete the boot trace.


My specs are:

OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (FW 1.5) - Boot drive; 50GB free space
Hitachi HTS542525K9SA00 - Storage drive; laptop HDD
Athlon II x3 460 3.4GHz (OC'ed to 3.57GHz)
2x 2GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz DDR3 RAM
Asus M4A88T-M (w/ latest BIOS)
OCZ ZS 550W
ATI Radeon HD 6770

 

[Boulard83]

Could you run ATTO on the SSD to see how it perform ?

Its a clean windows install or a cloned install from the HDD ?

 

[Skoll_21]

Could you run ATTO on the SSD to see how it perform ?

Its a clean windows install or a cloned install from the HDD ?

I'll try to run that and report back. It's a clean install.


EDIT: Here's the benchmark result (had only Skype and Steam running but it shouldn't have much impact, right?). Remember, my Mobo is SATA II.

 

[idkfa]

I searched a bit for this kind of issue and some people said it could be the optical drive or the storage HDD slowing up the booting time.

Would have been my first guess too, I took me minutes to boot into windows with a defect HDD connected to my PC. Was worried in the first place.
I can't set seperate settings for the ports, it's global AHCI and then I can / should set hot plug for my SATA port with my SSD.



Considering you run SATA II I think your results dont look bad. Did you check you MoBo manufactureres website if you should use a certain BIOS to use SSDs?

 

[Boulard83]

His result are OK for sata2 .... Sata 2 wont do over ~285mb/s and since he is on AMD 880, its may be the best it can do.

Did the SSD was slow at first, when you first installed windows or just AFTER setting your IDE for the HDD ? You may be better to run everything in AHCI mode ...

 

[Skoll_21]

Did you check you MoBo manufactureres website if you should use a certain BIOS to use SSDs?

The only thing I found was that RAID doesn't work with my mobo because the BIOS doesn't see the SSDs.

His result are OK for sata2 .... Sata 2 wont do over ~285mb/s and since he is on AMD 880, its may be the best it can do.

Did the SSD was slow at first, when you first installed windows or just AFTER setting your IDE for the HDD ? You may be better to run everything in AHCI mode ...

Yeah, it's always been slow on startup. But as I said, I tried booting with the storage HDD and optical drive disconnected, so I don't think that would be the problem.

 

[Boulard83]

Since its only slow on startup, there may be some issue on the drivers/windows loading. The SSD seems perform OK with ATTO.

Make sure you are running AHCI and when you installed windows, you were alreadi on AHCI ?

 

[madhatter256]

According to his original post, OP did enable AHCI prior to installing Win7.

Have you installed the latest chipset drivers off AMD's site?

I have a samsung 840 running off a SATAII and Win7 completely boots up (from the beginning of "Starting Windows" screen to the complete loading of all system tray icons) in about a minute. This was a fresh install and I timed it after I installed all of the programs. I'm running on an intel setup.

This SSD is making me itch to upgrade to a new board w/ SATA3.

 

[Skoll_21]

According to his original post, OP did enable AHCI prior to installing Win7.

Have you installed the latest chipset drivers off AMD's site?

I have a samsung 840 running off a SATAII and Win7 completely boots up (from the beginning of "Starting Windows" screen to the complete loading of all system tray icons) in about a minute. This was a fresh install and I timed it after I installed all of the programs. I'm running on an intel setup.

This SSD is making me itch to upgrade to a new board w/ SATA3.

Yes, I enabled AHCI before installing the OS.

Hmm, yeah I should really update the chipset drivers since I only installed the latest ones from the mobo drivers page, which are from 2010... I'll go do that right now.

Yeah, ikr. I'm thinking of buying a SATA III mobo at the end of this year so I can get the most out of my SSD and to allow a CPU upgrade as well if I feel the need to.

 

[Skoll_21]

Have you installed the latest chipset drivers off AMD's site?

OMG, that was it!! The "Starting Windows" screen was on for only 13 seconds now! I didn't know the chipset drivers included AHCI drivers, hahah. Such a simple problem.

Thank you so much!! And thanks to everyone else who tried to help!