***FIXED*** Vista booting is extremely slow...

[badnewcastle]

I just installed Vista HP x64-OEM, over the weekend. When I first turn the computer on it boots through bios extremely fast and the windows loading bar starts working after 3-4 passes the screen goes blank for 2-5 minutes... Granted the longer times were when the system was doing windows updates or driver updates etc... but is the black screen between the loading bar and Vista login screen is there for over 2 minutes regardless.

I had a few problems when installing at first it would crash while extracting the files at random %'s it seemed and it would reboot and give a me a bootmgr error... After deleting drives/partitions and recreating them (several times) I got it to install. Since then everything seems fine except it takes forever to boot.

Now I just put the computer in sleep instead and it is extremely fast... but when I have to do a restart it takes forever.

Is that normal?

The Fix:
1.) I uninstalled 1 dim of ram and booted to windows, then I rebooted and installed the second stick of ram.

2.) I unplugged my external HDD as windows was reading the whole thing, about 80 gigs of data... and then it would boot into windows. Does anyone know how to stop it from doing this so I can leave the drive plugged in?

The first step took loading times down from ~2-10 mins to 30-45 secs...
Second step brought boot time from post to Vista fully loaded to ~20 secs (FAST!).

 

[nerp]

Doesn't sound very normal. I've got a pretty weak laptop which boots Vista quite quickly and faster than XP.

You didn't happen to disable the readyboost service, by any chance?

 

[badnewcastle]

I have no idea, will check the ready boost when I get home... I didn't disable anything that I know of.

I don't know if readyboost would affect how fast it boots, I think it is a feature that works when you get into windows not before, I could be wrong though. I have 4GB of Ram now...

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: badnewcastle
Now I just put the computer in sleep instead and it is extremely fast... but when I have to do a restart it takes forever.

Is that normal?

Heh! 'Forever' and 'Normal' are relative terms, I suppose.

I read an article, years ago, that discussed this. They did some testing and... let's say a program takes 4 seconds to load. If they increased the load time to 8 seconds - ppl *thought* the machine was 10x slower than before, even though the load times only doubled. If they cut the time in half, from 4 seconds to 2 seconds, ppl *thought* it was 10x faster...

I'm running Vista HP (32-bit). The only other Vista OS I've used is' my mother-in-laws Vista HB machine - and, yes they take 'a while' to fully boot - probably 45 seconds to a minute before all the background processes load (Avast! AV, ATI Catalyst, Vista Battery Saver, et cetera).

On my install, I have 4GB RAM and a 4GB ReadyBoost drive. Those two mods helped the boot times quite a bit, but not as much as upgrading to Service Pack 1...

SP1 makes this machine *feel* much more 'normal', during boot up and shut down!

I haven't put a stopwatch to it, but I'd be willing to bet Vista boots up/shuts down as fast as W2K/XP Pro, which I 'normally' run on other machines.

Anyway, in my experience, yes, Vista takes 'forever' to start/re-start, but that is 'normal'...

 

[Linflas]

Have you looked in the event log to see if there are disk I/O errors logged? Sometimes a disk starting to go bad will cause problems like this and given the problems you experienced at install I would be looking for a hardware problem.

 

[badnewcastle]

Originally posted by: Linflas
Have you looked in the event log to see if there are disk I/O errors logged? Sometimes a disk starting to go bad will cause problems like this and given the problems you experienced at install I would be looking for a hardware problem.

Hmm... I will check the logs, I just remembered the other problem I had when I installed Vista. When it initially booted into windows and checked the system to see what could be run it, I got one of the famous blue screens and upped the voltage on my ram and it worked good from then on.

I thought it was hardware too so I ran memtest86+, prime95 and orthos. No problems there, and Crysis, Bioshock and COD4 run very nicely. Doesn't rule out hardware but seems like I would be seeing other problems if it was hardware.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: badnewcastle
Hmm... I just remembered the other problem I had when I installed Vista. When it initially booted into windows and checked the system to see what could be run it, I got one of the famous blue screens and upped the voltage on my ram and it worked good from then on...

You're the second person, I've heard of, that had this problem - happened to a co-worker too!

He built a new machine, a couple of weeks ago, with all top-notch components... but couldn't get Vista to install. After hours of pulling his hair out...

It turned out to be the RAM settings in BIOS. He *assumed* that using the default memory settings would work, but he had to change the memory timing and voltage to match his high-end RAM.

Vista seems to be very finicky about ReadyBoost and System memory...

 

[badnewcastle]

Originally posted by: VinDSL

Originally posted by: badnewcastle
Hmm... I just remembered the other problem I had when I installed Vista. When it initially booted into windows and checked the system to see what could be run it, I got one of the famous blue screens and upped the voltage on my ram and it worked good from then on...

You're the second person, I've heard of, that had this problem - happened to a co-worker too!

He built a new machine, a couple of weeks ago, with all top-notch components... but couldn't get Vista to install. After hours of pulling his hair out...

It turned out to be the RAM settings in BIOS. He *assumed* that using the default memory settings would work, but he had to change the memory timing and voltage to match his high-end RAM.

Vista seems to be very finicky about ReadyBoost and System memory...

So is everything working good on your friend's system now?

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: VinDSL

Originally posted by: badnewcastle
Hmm... I just remembered the other problem I had when I installed Vista. When it initially booted into windows and checked the system to see what could be run it, I got one of the famous blue screens and upped the voltage on my ram and it worked good from then on...

You're the second person, I've heard of, that had this problem - happened to a co-worker too!

He built a new machine, a couple of weeks ago, with all top-notch components... but couldn't get Vista to install. After hours of pulling his hair out...

It turned out to be the RAM settings in BIOS. He *assumed* that using the default memory settings would work, but he had to change the memory timing and voltage to match his high-end RAM.

Vista seems to be very finicky about ReadyBoost and System memory...

Interesting. I have a Sandisk Cruzer Micro 2GB readyboost stick that causes WMP11 to crash on my opteron whenever its connected, Readyboost enabled or not. It doesn't do this to my Celeron M 400 laptop.

My opteron box has the ballistix and I do have the BIOS set to auto the settings. I guess I aught to double check their rated settings and adjust them accordingly. Hmm... If this works you'll be my technological muse for the week.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: badnewcastle
So is everything working good on your friend's system now?

Yes! Perfect...

He's a Vista fanboi now!

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: nerp
My opteron box has the ballistix and I do have the BIOS set to auto the settings. I guess I aught to double check their rated settings and adjust them accordingly. Hmm... If this works you'll be my technological muse for the week.

Here's another one for you - from a different thread...

Sorry for all the cross-posting, but I *think* it's important!

Originally posted by: VinDSL
I digress - XP Pro instead of Vista this time:

On the topic of default RAM settings in BIOS, we built a ASUS P5K-E/WiFi-AP machine last weekend, and it wouldn't even boot with OCZ memory sticks. However, it booted with Corsair sticks. We *assumed* the OCZ sticks were bad, but...

It turned out that this ASUS mobo defaulted to 1.8v, but the OCZ memory required 2.1v - a huge difference!

The trick was to install the Corsair memory, specify the correct voltage and timing in BIOS, then reinstall the OCZ.

Anyway, yes, make sure the memory settings in BIOS match the specs of your particular RAM sticks, otherwise you'll experience all sorts of odd behavior...

If you check the OCZ Memory Configurator you'll see that they do NOT recommend any of their RAM for this mobo - it simply says to 'Call' them.

Since it was the weekend, I didn't bother calling them, but...

I'll bet if I contacted OCZ, they would tell me the same things that were discussed above...

 

[badnewcastle]

Yeah... I couldn't find any information regarding compatibility with my mobo and the OCZ sticks I got... so I asked MSI and OCZ and both said they would work fine and be great sticks though MSI contradicted themselves because at first they told me it would work fine but that the OCZ chips are "rubbish" so then I asked what they recommend and the same guy said oh get the OCZ and run at stock settings it will work great.

I just drank :beer: and ordered the OCZ which worked good on xp so I drank more :beer: and installed Vista the next day other then starting slow it seems to work fine so I'll probably keep drinking :beer:.

 

[VinDSL]

Bwahahaha!

Now you did it!!!

I'm gotta go get myself some :beer: "Stiff Henry"...

 

[badnewcastle]

Originally posted by: VinDSL
"Stiff Henry"...

^The cause, effect and solution in one. :thumbsup:

 

[badnewcastle]

It's fixed.

 

[emfiend]

Originally posted by: badnewcastle
I just installed Vista HP x64-OEM, over the weekend. When I first turn the computer on it boots through bios extremely fast and the windows loading bar starts working after 3-4 passes the screen goes blank for 2-5 minutes... Granted the longer times were when the system was doing windows updates or driver updates etc... but is the black screen between the loading bar and Vista login screen is there for over 2 minutes regardless.

I had a few problems when installing at first it would crash while extracting the files at random %'s it seemed and it would reboot and give a me a bootmgr error... After deleting drives/partitions and recreating them (several times) I got it to install. Since then everything seems fine except it takes forever to boot.

Now I just put the computer in sleep instead and it is extremely fast... but when I have to do a restart it takes forever.

Is that normal?

The Fix:
1.) I uninstalled 1 dim of ram and booted to windows, then I rebooted and installed the second stick of ram.

2.) I unplugged my external HDD as windows was reading the whole thing, about 80 gigs of data... and then it would boot into windows. Does anyone know how to stop it from doing this so I can leave the drive plugged in?

The first step took loading times down from ~2-10 mins to 30-45 secs...
Second step brought boot time from post to Vista fully loaded to ~20 secs (FAST!).

Sounds as if you may have "Boot from USB" enabled in bios and the boot order of your drives is out of whack. Perhaps disabling boot from bios is the trick...


Edit: Err... I meant "disabling boot from usb" is the trick...

 

[badnewcastle]

Originally posted by: emfiend

Sounds as if you may have "Boot from USB" enabled in bios and the boot order of your drives is out of whack. Perhaps disabling boot from bios is the trick...


Edit: Err... I meant "disabling boot from usb" is the trick...

No I checked that, my boot is set to my HDD first then my DVDRW.

"Boot From Other Device" is set to "NO."

 

[bucwylde23]

Originally posted by: badnewcastle

2.) I unplugged my external HDD as windows was reading the whole thing, about 80 gigs of data... and then it would boot into windows. Does anyone know how to stop it from doing this so I can leave the drive plugged in?

The first step took loading times down from ~2-10 mins to 30-45 secs...
Second step brought boot time from post to Vista fully loaded to ~20 secs (FAST!).[/b]

I have the same problem. I have my 250 GB Western Digital Mybook external USB hard drive attached and it takes forever to Vista to load. It "hangs" on a blank screen for much longer than it does with the drive connected.
It doesn't usually bother me because I leave my computer on 24/7. But when I do have to reboot I usually just let it do it's thing and go in the other room.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: badnewcastle
It's fixed.

You forget to list the most important step of all...

I drank :beer: and I drank more :beer: and I'll probably keep drinking :beer: .

 

[badnewcastle]

Well this fix took a special brew from my alma mater, which makes forgetting easy.:beer::thumbsup:

 

[bsobel]

2.) I unplugged my external HDD as windows was reading the whole thing, about 80 gigs of data... and then it would boot into windows. Does anyone know how to stop it from doing this so I can leave the drive plugged in?

How do you know windows was reading the whole thing? Anyhow, sounds like perhaps chkdsk is running. If you plug the drive in and run a repair on it from within windows, does it test clean?

 

[badnewcastle]

Haven't tried that, I don't really know if it's checking the whole thing but it checking something because I can put my ear up to it and hear it speed up and slow down. While my HDD light and DVD lights are inactive...

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: badnewcastle
Haven't tried that, I don't really know if it's checking the whole thing but it checking something because I can put my ear up to it and hear it speed up and slow down.

Drives dont speed up and slow down, if thats what your hearing, the drive might be failing.
Bill

 

[badnewcastle]

hmm... I'll check the drive in windows and see if it is working correctly or not.