guys, its all about mobo selection (firmware) and BIOS configuration... My current mobo takes over a minute to start loading windows. I have had mobos that, with specific configuration, started loading windows within a few seconds.
Its not that difficult. Some mobos can concurrently poll multiple IDE chanels while others do them one by one, most mobos take longer for using AHCI, and if they have a secondary controller, longer load.
Hmmm. The majority of the boot time of my pc is the black screen and white text (not sure what that's called!), probably about 40 seconds. As soon as the windows 7 loading bar pops up it's almost instant.
The point at which windows 7 loading bar pops up, thats when it just accessed your HDD or SSD...
You can physically unplug your HDD/SSD (having none in the system) and it will load up identically up that point. Only instead of the win7 loading bar it will say "boot disk not found" in white text on black background.
POST is the first part of the thing, it goes on until you hear one beep. After wards you have just various bios stuff loading up until you get the win7 logo, the win7 logo means you started loading the OS from the hard drive or SSD.