Slow boot with new SSD, fresh install

[Vexillarius]

Hi all,

I bought myself a Samsung 840 Evo 250 GB SSD.
I first made sure my SATA controllers were set to AHCI, Secure Erased the SSD and benchmarked the SSD (didn't quite reach advertised speeds but nothing too bad) and updated the SSDs firmware (all while still under my HDD Windows 7 install), then uncoupled all drives, hooked up my SSD to SATA port 0 (the AMD one, which are all SATA 6Gb/s). Installed windows, followed http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds to the letter.
The following boot times are what Bootracer tells me. According to Windows own logs, it's even much worse (around 59 secs BootTime, 34 secs MainPath right now). Except for the first one, that was me just counting.
Boot times when I only installed Windows were very good, 10-12 seconds from the end of POST to usable desktop. That changed as soon as I started installing mobo drivers. Boot took about 10 seconds longer immediately. When I was done with the above guide, boot times had gone up to about 45 seconds at least.
Obviously, I wasn't happy. Changing my DVD drive to a Marvell SATA port shaved close to 20 seconds off, adding my 2TB HDD back to a AMD SATA 6Gb/s port added that 20 seconds right back again. Formatting the HDD made no difference. I tried redoing the whole process (Secure Erase, one drive hooked up, fresh Windows 7 install, followed that guide again), same result.
I tried uncoupling every single USB device except keyboard and mouse, no difference. I uncoupled everything attached to a SATA port except the SSD, which again shaves off about 20 seconds which came right back again as soon as I attach my now-formatted HDD.
I tried clearing CMOS, then re-enabling AHCI and other settings, no difference.
I'm at a loss here, I seriously don't know what to do anymore and I'm starting to get really annoyed. Even with the SSD being the only drive hooked up, booting takes longer than it should (25-35 seconds from end of POST to usable desktop). I don't know if this piece-of-**** mobo is to blame again, or if it's drivers or whatever else.
I do know for a fact that I installed the SSD and then Windows 7 onto the SSD while AHCI was enabled. I should also mention that once booted, it seems that my system is as fast as you'd expect from an SSD.
If anyone can help, please tell me what to do. I'll give 72 e-cookies to whoever helps me resolve this.
Attached is a AS SSD benchmark I just did.

EDIT: I also disabled SuperFetch and PreFetch, Indexing, and enabled write back caching and turned off windows write-caching buffer flushing on the SSD. Also, diabled Hibernation, shrunk the Page File, again, everything in that guide. Mobo is revision 1.1, I'll add that to my sig real quick.

 

[Robert17]

What does your Start Menu look like? It could be clogging up the works.

 

[Vexillarius]

Do you mean the startup list in MSConfig?
Like this:

I tried disabling everything, no difference.

EDIT: Also, no clue if it's related, but download speeds are down from 1-2 MB/s before the SSD to 850 KB/s now. Could just be random and fix itself later though.

 

[Robert17]

I would disable all the checked items above in your Start Menu excepting for the audio devices. Save, reboot.

Then go into your Services Menu, check that out as well. It may also be sucking the life out of your resources. When all is said and done, your SSD has no bearing on your download speeds.

Try updating your BIOS, chipset drivers, firmware drivers, everything that can get updated or patched.

 

[Vexillarius]

Tried disabling everything (again) and also disabled all services except Microsoft's services. No improvement.

Chipset and Firmware were already up to date.
I updated BIOS from F9 to F10, no improvement. Then from F10 to F11d beta, it installed some ATA Channel drivers at the next boot up. I rebooted twice since then, no improvement.

Strangely enough, the Marvell SATA Controller was/is set to AHCI but at boot I could catch a glimpse of my DVD drive (which is connected to the Marvell Controller) being on IDE Master 0 or something like that. That seems to have disappeared since the last BIOS update. Still mentions of IDE on the POST screen though (but not nearly as much as when I set AMD SATA to IDE, so it's probably the Marvell Controller).

I should also note that it doesn't take long at all to get through the Windows Logon screen (1 account, no password), 5 seconds according to Bootracer but it feels more like 2 or 3.

 

[EarthDog]

I would think spreading your peripherals across different controllers would lengthen your boot time seeing as how you need to initialize those controllers versus if everything was on that native controller and disabling unused controllers.

 

[Vexillarius]

Yes that would make sense. It doesn't seem to be the case for me though...

My DVD driver does still show up in the IDE list on the POST screen, something Marvell related I guess, it works fine and doesn't seem to affect boot times so I'm okay with it.

I used DiskMax to clear out pretty much all unneeded and temporary files. Bootracer now seems convinced I'm booting quicker (32 seconds instead of 45). I don't notice anything though.

I'm starting to think I might have two seperate problems: something is holding up the loading of Windows AND something is wrong with my SATA controller or something related (because of the 20 seconds added by plugging anything other than my SSD into the AMD SATA controller).
Isn't there some kind of diagnostic I can run to show me what exactly is taking so long?

Attached is a screenshot of my latest Event 100 log.

EDIT: Alright, I tried hooking my HDD up to the Marvell controller. First of all, even though the Marvell controller is set to AHCI in BIOS, it seems to use IDE regardless. Secondly, boot times improved by about 20 seconds at first, then degraded back to about 40-50 seconds again over the course of 3 reboots.
Strangely enough, when I hook up only my primary SSD and a secondary SSD (one of those 506A crappy Kingstons with nothing on it) boot times are comparable to having only my primary SSD hooked up.

 

[Vexillarius]

I think this warrants a fresh post.
Changing SATA ports/cables (HDD to the secondary SSD and vice versa) seems to have more permanently shaved off those 20 seconds from before. I feel really stupid now.
Bootracer says 22 seconds now, and I've attached a new Event 100.
Still wondering about some kind of diagnostic tool to see what's still taking a little longer than it should.

 

[Tyerker]

See, I didn't even know AHCI made a difference. I had a Linux install with my SATA controllers as IDE, and the boot time was pretty quick. But now with AHCI, it's seriously like 3 seconds from hitting Enter on the GRUB screen until I'm at the Mint login screen, and then I hit enter and my desktop pretty much just appears.

I was going to install Windows 8 on the SSD, but it kept trying to write the MBR to my 7200RPM HDD, so it wasn't booting as fast as it could.

 

[Vexillarius]

That's the kind of speed I was expecting. Not this. And as far as I can tell I did evereything right...

Changing SATA port/cable didn't work after all, it just took a bit longer for those 20 seconds to come back.

Also, I swear to god, if it turns out my Mobo is to blame again I'm going to give the thing a bath. In it's own blood. If it had any.
It's really luxurious and everything but I think I just got a really bad one, overclocking is downright impossible due to absolutely retarded vDroop, and now this... I really hope it's something else this time.

 

[EarthDog]

Windows boot /= Linux boots. Apples to basketballs comparison there.

 

[Vexillarius]

Still, loads of people claim their Windows 7 PC with an SSD start in 8-12-15 seconds. That's what I was expecting, fresh Windows install and all.

Also, I just unplugged my external USB HDD drive. Shaved 20 seconds off again. I TRIED that before. THREE TIMES. It had NO effect.
I wonder how long the improvement will last this time. Also, I'd like to actually use my external drive without crap like this happening constantly.

 

[Tyerker]

Off-Topic: What do you have your Load Line Calibration set to? The 8-Cores require this to be set decently high to compensate for that VDroop. I have mine set to Extreme, but some people have told me I shouldn't do that. No good reason not to, from my experience thus far. Temperatures are manageable, and the system is 100% stable at 4GHz below stock voltages.

On-Topic: How long does it take to get to the "Loading Operating System" screen? Anything before this screen would be BIOS settings that are slowing things down. To piggy-back off of what Earthdog said, I would suggest trying to boot the system with only your SSD, keyboard, mouse, and monitor plugged directly into the motherboard ports. The more things the system has to initialize, the longer the boot will take. Maybe some external device is taking forever to authenticate.

 

[Vexillarius]

I made this www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7696195 topic about the whole overclocking debacle. It's my Mobo, not my settings.

BIOS loading is somewhat variable, 5-15 seconds, but I don't count that when I mention boot times.
I already tried decoupling everything, the only thing that seems to consistenly matter is having a device next to my SSD hooked up to the AMD SATA ports. But even without that, it takes about 20-25 seconds to get from the end of POST to a usable desktop. Adding another device seems to randomly add 20 or more seconds. And as you can tell from my previous post, decoupling/changing ports/etc. is quite inconsistent in the improvements (if any) it gives me.

I'll try booting with only the essentials hooked up again.

Results:


Just like last time. Now to plug things in one-by-one.

Right, here's what I did, full shutdown in between each one:
Internet Cable | No difference
Soundcables | No difference
Hotswap Bay (with nothing in it) | No difference
DVD Drive (with nothing in it) plugged into AMD controller +3-6 seconds, then plugged into Marvell controller gains me about a second and a half
HDD +1-2 seconds (what, how, I don't even... that used to take 20+ seconds)
Secondary SSD | No difference
USB HDD in USB 3.0 port | +1-2 seconds
End result:


Not bad right? Yeah well, next shutdown and boot, I didn't change anything, gave me this:



I don't have a clue why this happens... It seems better for 1-2 boots, then it swiftly kicks me in the groin again.

 

[EarthDog]

MainPAthBootTime... whatever that is, went up a ton... as well as the SmSS init time... otherwise, things look to be in the ballpark.

 

[Vexillarius]

Yep. Googled it, apparently it could be a half-broken HDD (internal or external), or a driver issue (or a 100 other things probably).
I'm going to follow a tutorial for a boot trace, if anyone knows how to analyze a boot trace, or if you know someone who does, please let me know.

EDIT: I'll do a checkdisk on both HDDs first actually.

EDIT 2: No problems found with either HDD. Boot times are all over the place, sometimes it boots in 20 seconds, sometimes 30, sometimes 60... Also opened a thread on SevenForums, they seem to have a bit more experience with boot traces.

 

[Vexillarius]

Okay, I did yet another fresh install. Installed mobo drivers one by one with 3 reboots in between. As soon as I got to the Etron USB 3.0 Controller drivers, boom, +30 seconds. Removed that driver, and removed 2 now unidentified USB Controllers from device manager, poof, -30 seconds. Boot times are now at about 20 seconds including about 10-12 seconds of POST. Awesome! (will go up a bit ofcourse as I install everything else, but probably not by 30 seconds again)
Only thing is ofcourse, I can't use my USB 3.0 ports now. Installing the newest driver didn't help, not by installing it over the old one and not by installing it clean. So if anyone can help with that it'd be much appreciated.
If not, thanks for all the help here guys, especially to EarthDog for noticing the BootSmSSInit increase which put me on the driver trail! Though I really should have noticed that myself haha.

 

[Robert17]

That is interesting. It seems that the Etron EJ168 USB controller may also be the Fast Charge driver for chargeable devices such as iPhones. Below is the driver from Etron's site:

http://www.etron.com/en/products/u3hc_detial.php?Product_ID=1

It may or may not solve the issue. But there is a note on Gigabyte's site that says you may need to have a device plugged in prior to booting the PC in order for the controller to detect a compatible device. In other words, all the kinks weren't worked out at the time of packaging drivers with MBs.

 

[johan851]

If you're using the drivers from the motherboard's site or the CD that came with the mobo, I would definitely try to find updated drivers from the chipset/controller manufacturer, as Robert17 mentioned. Usually the motherboard drivers are way out of date, and at worst are a "this made it barely work" situation. I had 100KB/s speeds over my LAN until I used the LAN chipset manufacturer's latest driver, and then they jumped to 9mb/s.

 

[Woomack]

If you didn't make it yet then check the latest BIOS. These boards had SATA controller issues caused by BIOS. Like auto setting for RAID was forcing RAID5 for some reason regardless of amount of drives. At least I had some issues when I had 990FXA-UD5 and these boards have almost the same design flaws and BIOS fixes.