Boot Camp: Why does the Air take so long to load?

[vbuggy]

Having run HD speed tests in Boot Camp, it's certainly not the speed of the drive. I have the 256Gb's on all my Air's which throws up respectable figures, unlike some mSATA based ultrabooks - all of which still boots faster.

I'm sure the rabid Appleholics will dispute that Apple cripples various drivers most likely intentionally, but I'm wondering exactly what it is about the standard Boot Camp install that makes the Air's boot so slowly - upwards of >50 seconds to the logon screen, when a SB-based Windows 7 machine with decent SSD's are capable of booting to the logon screen faster than any Air in OS X.

Sometimes I do have to switch frequently between OS X and Windows 7 when I'm on one of the Macs and I'd rather not deal with the finger-tapping waiting for Windows to load when I'm switching between OS's.

 

[TheStu]

Ok, well, um... didn't you just answer your own question? Apple did not (either maliciously or otherwise) optimize the system to boot Windows.

You said 'standard Boot Camp install', do you have an un-standard way to install it that lets it boot more quickly? The system has an EFI, which certainly lets Win8 boot a whole lot faster when paired with an SSD. Have you tested with Win8? Have you tested with a bare Win7 install that doesn't go through Boot Camp?

 

[vbuggy]

Ok, well, um... didn't you just answer your own question? Apple did not (either maliciously or otherwise) optimize the system to boot Windows.

You said 'standard Boot Camp install', do you have an un-standard way to install it that lets it boot more quickly? The system has an EFI, which certainly lets Win8 boot a whole lot faster when paired with an SSD. Have you tested with Win8? Have you tested with a bare Win7 install that doesn't go through Boot Camp?

There's optimisation and there's crippling. A 2 year old notebook with a much slower SSD boots in half the time. For some reason the Mac hangs around the Starting Windows screen for far longer than is necessary. I wanted to know if there was a specific driver / etc cause of it.

 

[TheStu]

Have you tired any of the things I asked?

 

[dawks]

My Mac Pro boots Windows 7 on a 10,000 RPM Raptor in like 20-25seconds. I did noticed when I switched out the original boot drive, for a new, larger and faster boot drive (by doing a bit for bit copy with CCC), it the system now takes about 15-20 seconds of just sitting there before booting into OS/X.. After that it boots faster than the old drive, but theres an annoying delay there. Windows def boots faster.

 

[nerp]

Did you install all the drivers that comes with the OSX install disc? This is essential, otherwise you'll never have all the driver issues sorted. My boot camp install boots up just as fast as any of my Windows boxes.

 

[TheStu]

Did you install all the drivers that comes with the OSX install disc? This is essential, otherwise you'll never have all the driver issues sorted. My boot camp install boots up just as fast as any of my Windows boxes.

Are any of your systems on an SSD? That is the OP's beef. That on a Mac with an SSD, booting OS X takes about 15-20s, but when booting Windows on that same system it takes 50-60s. However, on equivalent hardware (or lesser) but with a Dell/Samsung/HP/whatever logo instead of an Apple, Windows boots in 15-20s.

I don't have an answer for the OP, and would like to know if he is suffering from the same problems under Windows 8 (if he has tried it), and if he has tried installing Windows 7 to the bare drive. I think that at the end of the day, Apple just doesn't give a flip, they don't sell Windows computers, so why should they care how long it takes to boot Windows. They provided a way to boot Windows, end of story.

 

[vbuggy]

Did you install all the drivers that comes with the OSX install disc? This is essential, otherwise you'll never have all the driver issues sorted. My boot camp install boots up just as fast as any of my Windows boxes.

Yeah. Thru Boot Camp. And it's not a single machine fluke - I have several 11 and 13-inch mid-2011 Air's all with the 256Gb SSD, and they all do the same thing. All the different machines boots Windows within I'd say ~2 secs of each other, and that's >50 seconds to the logon screen.

Regarding the above poster with the Pro - My Pro's aren't Boot Camped. We had some stability issues and I never bothered after that so I've ended up always having a proper workstation sitting next to each Pro, but it might be interesting to try to see if it's something that's not limited in the desktops.