Really slow Windows 7 boot on new SSD

[nardz84]

So I got my 64gb Crucial C300 in the other day and popped it in. I thought I took care of everything (achi, etc) in my Gigabyte P55-Ud3R board and did a clean install without my storage drives plugged in. For some reason it goes really slow on the 'Starting Windows' animated screen, like 1-2 minutes, but once its up everything is nice and snappy. Any suggestions on finding the cause of this?

 

[CraigRT]

Disable an optical drive as a device in your boot order. (AHCI only problem)
I had the same problem, and as soon as my boot order was only my primary HDD, it went to that screen for half a second then loaded windows.

This is on a P55A-UD4P/OCZ Vertex2 SSD.

 

[Makaveli]

Yes make sure SSD is the first device in boot order then check it again.

 

[Termie]

So I got my 64gb Crucial C300 in the other day and popped it in. I thought I took care of everything (achi, etc) in my Gigabyte P55-Ud3R board and did a clean install without my storage drives plugged in. For some reason it goes really slow on the 'Starting Windows' animated screen, like 1-2 minutes, but once its up everything is nice and snappy. Any suggestions on finding the cause of this?

Relax your memory timings. This was killing my SSD boots - had same pause on Windows screen for 1-2 minutes. Haven't had a problem since. Go figure.

I don't think it's the boot drive settings, guys. He's already past the BIOS.

By the way, I had the same problem on another system that was dual boot Win7/Vista. I set the OS selection screen to two seconds (rather than zero) and that fixed it in that case. Again, go figure.

 

[nardz84]

Finally got home to try this out, removing the dvd drive from the boot options entirely did the trick, it was already listed behind the ssd. Thanks all for the tips.

edit: That or it was just booting it up lucky number 5? times, who knows. I had originally thought it was because windows was updating every time I went to reboot but that wasn't the case.

 

[Termie]

Finally got home to try this out, removing the dvd drive from the boot options entirely did the trick, it was already listed behind the ssd. Thanks all for the tips.

edit: That or it was just booting it up lucky number 5? times, who knows. I had originally thought it was because windows was updating every time I went to reboot but that wasn't the case.

I'll have to try this - see if I can get into Windows even faster.

 

[hal2kilo]

I'll have to try this - see if I can get into Windows even faster.

You'd think at this stage of technology, that it would take less than 10 to 15 seconds for opticals (CDs, DVDs, MOs) to be recognized. Not sure what the issues are but god forbid anyone know how to write some machine level code anymore.

 

[Brian Stirling]

I won't be happy until a PC can boot to full functionality in less than 5 seconds. This needs to be an area of importance for M$, Linux and Apple.


Brian

 

[razel]

I won't be happy until a PC can boot to full functionality in less than 5 seconds. This needs to be an area of importance for M$, Linux and Apple.

You would have been happy back in the late 80's. My 1st PC was a Tandy which held DOS and it's Deskmate GUI in ROM. That booted up in Deskmate within seconds. Of course, you still can have a PC usable ONE second if you use sleep without hibernation. This has been possible since the early 2000's. There really is NO NEED for 90% of people to shutdown.

Of course even now, if you actually live with an SSD and use your OS on a regular basis allowing Windows Vista/7 to learn about your needs and prep itself, you can bootup under 15 seconds. What's 10 seconds anyhow. Is life truly in that much of a rush or you reboot that often that it's taking that much time out of your life everyday?

 

[Voo]

I won't be happy until a PC can boot to full functionality in less than 5 seconds. This needs to be an area of importance for M$, Linux and Apple.

First of all writing "M$" just makes you look like an adolescence from the 90s (well or a slashdot reader).

Anyhow, the largest amount of time is usually spent in the BIOS and if the OS takes long to boot chances are it's a misbehaving driver. And while there surely are things that can be further optimized in the OS itself, those two factors hings are where we could get the most.. for much less effort.

Though with a functioning sleep, not much reason to worry about that imho.

 

[Arsynic]

I had this same issue with my new 120 GB C300. I also have AHCI enabled. I'll disable the DVD drive from the boot order when I get home.

 

[Burner27]

I wish I could live without a DVD device in my machine. I am really tempted to just have one in an external enclosure and power it on as needed.

 

[jsedlak]

You'd think at this stage of technology, that it would take less than 10 to 15 seconds for opticals (CDs, DVDs, MOs) to be recognized. Not sure what the issues are but god forbid anyone know how to write some machine level code anymore.

The worst is accidentally hitting an "A" drive and having to wait while it figures out there is no such thing.

 

[Burner27]

Wasn't the last time a floppy drive controller was included on a motherboard in 2010?

 

[KingFatty]

So is your optical drive set to use AHCI? I'm curious, because my mobo can selectively assign whether SATA ports 5-6 are IDE or AHCI, separately from assigning whether the SATA ports 1-4 are IDE or AHCI. So, I could set the SSD and hard drive to use AHCI, and set the optical drives to use IDE.

But it sounds like the solution doesn't care what you assign the optical drive, you just remove the optical drive from the list of bootup devices? Or, can you re-create the issue by adding back the optical drive to the list, but then change the SATA port from AHCI back to IDE and see if that also solves the problem?

 

[DDR4]

It is loading the settings in your RAM, that's why it takes so long.

 

[Arsynic]

Turns out my issue wasn't related to the device boot order at all. It was related to the Microsoft AHCI driver being the default. I switched to the AMD AHCI driver and the start up from the Win 7 splash screen is much faster.

My biggest issue now is my motherboard. I have a SATA3 HDD on a SATA 2 controller which explained why my ATTO numbers were half of what I saw other people pushing. It's disappointing, to say the less. I assumed that since the mobo supported USB3 that it supported SATA3.

Maybe this will help the OP. Don't use the MS AHCI drivers.

 

[KingFatty]

... It was related to the Microsoft AHCI driver being the default. I switched to the AMD AHCI driver and the start up from the Win 7 splash screen is much faster.
...
Maybe this will help the OP. Don't use the MS AHCI drivers.

Can you elaborate on what was involved in switching the default AHCI driver from Microsoft to AMD?

Did you have to go to the AMD website to locate specific drivers for AHCI, like was it a separate download?