Windows Vista Ultimate Slow Boot

[sanzen07]

Just installed Vista Ultimate yesterday on the rig in my sig and everything went extremely smoothly until I restarted a few times and noticed that Vista would sit at the black boot screen with the green progress indicator for about 3 minutes (with no disk activity) until it finally loaded the OS. The majority of the time when I start up the computer (since installing Vista) it takes forever like this but sometimes when it gets to the black loading screen I can hear disk activity immediately and it only stays on the load screen for 10 seconds or less, resulting in a MUCH faster boot. I don't really know what to do but this is highly annoying.

I installed TweakVista because it detects in variations in load times, which it did. Normal boot in TweakVista says around 35-45 seconds but when it hangs for a while on the load screen the boot time is around 240 seconds. It looks like it might be hanging on device startup since it reports 212 seconds for Device Startup, but it says No special events noted. Also, the components in this system are known good because I've been running Windows XP on it for around 6 months. Anyone have a similar issue? I am at a loss as to what I should do...

 

[videopho]

Unless you've already done so. Otherwise, you may take a look at this:
Vista's 4gb issue

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: sanzen07
Just installed Vista Ultimate yesterday on the rig in my sig and everything went extremely smoothly until I restarted a few times and noticed that Vista would sit at the black boot screen with the green progress indicator for about 3 minutes (with no disk activity) until it finally loaded the OS. The majority of the time when I start up the computer (since installing Vista) it takes forever like this but sometimes when it gets to the black loading screen I can hear disk activity immediately and it only stays on the load screen for 10 seconds or less, resulting in a MUCH faster boot. I don't really know what to do but this is highly annoying.

I installed TweakVista because it detects in variations in load times, which it did. Normal boot in TweakVista says around 35-45 seconds but when it hangs for a while on the load screen the boot time is around 240 seconds. It looks like it might be hanging on device startup since it reports 212 seconds for Device Startup, but it says No special events noted. Also, the components in this system are known good because I've been running Windows XP on it for around 6 months. Anyone have a similar issue? I am at a loss as to what I should do...

Do some full shutdowns (no sleep/hibernation) and let it stay off 5 secs.

Do some boots. You should get the exact same boot each time. If not, start looking at hardware. The boot code doesn't change each boot. The same instructions are executed each time. If you get different results it's likely not the software.

 

[sanzen07]

Okay, I did full shutdowns and boots and it does the same thing each time, takes a long time to get past the Windows boot screen. How do I find out what is making it take so long?

 

[Smilin]

k, you talking blackscreen with the small vista logo right?

It's System start type drivers coming up at that point. Short of checking hklm\system\ccs\services for start type 1 devices you can just take a guess with msconfig.

First, check system and app logs to see if anything is hanging at boot. The culprit might be sitting right there in the log. If not..

run msconfig.
On the startup tab, uncheck everything. Give it a boot. I'm betting that doesn't make much difference because those are typically automatic or later in the start sequence. We need to eliminate them as a variable tho. If it doesn't make a difference you can reenable em.

Next, goto the services tab. These are more likly the culprits. Hit the 'hide all microsoft services' checkbox at the bottem then do a 'disable all' on anything that remains. If this fixes it, use elimination to figure out which one. If it does not fix it then you've likely got a hardware device driver with a system start type that's causing grief. Start physically unplugging or disabling via device manager to find the culprit.

 

[sanzen07]

I'm talking the black screen where it has the green loading bar and says "Copyright blah blah Microsoft". This is where it's just sitting there. I looked at the system and app logs and it doesn't show any errors/warnings about anything hanging. I also unchecked everything under the startup tab and disabled all non-MS services in msconfig as you suggested and tried that, but still the same result. I also noticed that in TweakVista that is telling me that my IDE controller took 210 seconds to initialize. So I went into the Device Manager and saw that under IDE controllers there are two ATA Channel 0 devices listed. Shouldn't there only be one Channel 0? I removed one of them and rebooted and the boot went much faster. However, when I got back to Windows it reinstalled another ATA Channel 0 device. So I rebooted again and of course it went slowly like before. I don't know if that had anything to do with the problem or not... This is so frustrating, I'm about ready to go back to XP....

 

[Smilin]

If you have two IDE devices on the same controller (two CD burners for instance) this could be normal. You know more about your hardware setup than me. 210 seconds is indeed a long time to wait on a controller to initialize.

If you remove it will redetect every time.

You have to either choose disable (leaves in place but doesn't start it) or you have to disable the device in bios.

When monkeying with mass storage devices if you accidentally get a boot critical device disabled it can be a pickle to get back from. lastknowngood would be the first choice. Have a restore point created in case you need plan B. You can shoot yourself in the foot pretty good and still recover with a Vista DVD as long as you have a restore point available.

 

[sanzen07]

I think both of my SATA hard drives are on the same controller. I only have a single CD Burner using IDE. Hmm...I'll have to do some more troubleshooting tonight when I get home.

 

[BD2003]

Did the HD light stay solid during that time? I have a few issues with that the I/O controller on my board every now and then as well. I can ususally fix it by shutting down and pulling the plug.

Did you install the intel drivers for your board off their site?

 

[sanzen07]

Yeah, I used the INF Chipset Drivers from the Intel site. It was the first thing I installed after did the clean install of Vista. The HDD does not stay on and I do not hear any sort of HDD activity during this time. It just sits there with the green bar going by for 3 minutes or so and then finally I hear HDD activity and it loads Vista.

 

[videopho]

Try to boot into safe-mode to see if you experience the same slowness.
This is to eliminate possible driver issue or conflict.
Have you looked into my 1st post as well?

 

[sanzen07]

Yep, I already had all the Vista updates and looked at my installed updates and verified that one is installed. Also, booting into safe mode doesn't have this problem, it's only when I do a normal boot.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: sanzen07
Yeah, I used the INF Chipset Drivers from the Intel site. It was the first thing I installed after did the clean install of Vista. The HDD does not stay on and I do not hear any sort of HDD activity during this time. It just sits there with the green bar going by for 3 minutes or so and then finally I hear HDD activity and it loads Vista.

Did it specify exactly which controller/channel was causing the problem?

The two "Channel 0s" is normal - you will have a channel 0 and 1 (at least) for every controller card in your system - I have 3 of each, one set for the intel sata, one set for the jmicron, and one set for the PATA. So you probably have one set for the SATA, and one set for the PATA.

Try rolling back the SATA drivers to the stock microsoft ones. Also, make sure theres no CD in your drive - a badly scratched CD/DVD could cause the drive to keep trying to access it and failing for quite some time, while locking up the PC.

Are you using AHCI or IDE for your HDs? Is DMA enabled on everything?

 

[sanzen07]

No, I didn't see anything about which specific IDE channel was causing the issue. So I opened up the device manager and it says my hard drives are using Ultra DMA Mode 2. Shouldn't these be using UDMA 5 or something? I think that's what they were using under XP.

But what is weird is that the last 5 boots I have done have been quick and haven't hung at the loading screen. Weird, it seems like its fixed itself which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

 

[videopho]

Originally posted by: sanzen07
No, I didn't see anything about which specific IDE channel was causing the issue. So I opened up the device manager and it says my hard drives are using Ultra DMA Mode 2. Shouldn't these be using UDMA 5 or something? I think that's what they were using under XP.

But what is weird is that the last 5 boots I have done have been quick and haven't hung at the loading screen. Weird, it seems like its fixed itself which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Sounds like "Oops, operator error" along the line.
Anyhow, it's good to hear the problem decides to digest itself.
Welcome to the WOW Vista!

 

[sanzen07]

Well I suppose I spoke too soon. Restarted today and it hung at the loading screen for about 3 minutes. I don't get it, why would it boot quickly sometimes but not other times?

 

[videopho]

Originally posted by: sanzen07
Well I suppose I spoke too soon. Restarted today and it hung at the loading screen for about 3 minutes. I don't get it, why would it boot quickly sometimes but not other times?

It now sounds like hardware related failure?
Try to run at 2gb ram for now and see what happens next.

 

[AllGamer]

Try using STATIC IP address, and reboot again.

sounds like it is trying to obtain an IP from a DHCP server that is not answering.

 

[sanzen07]

So I'm pretty sure it's not hardware failure. I've been running this rig under Windows XP for 6 months and it's been rock solid. I've run the RAM under MemTest86+ for 8 hours straight without error. I'll try the static IP thing though.

 

[Smilin]

obtaining an IP won't hold up a boot. In fact you can get all the way to your desktop without an IP. Memtest also wouldn't really apply here. If you were having bugchecks that would be different.

If you are cold booting (as opposed to a soft reset or resume from sleep) and you see random boot times then something is up with your hardware. A cold boot should be *consistently* good (everything ok) or *consistently* bad (potential software issue). If there is inconsistency then look to hardware...it doesn't matter if things "appear" ok or the system ran fine before the last format.

If you have data indicating a slow initialization out of a mass storage controller start there. Disable that controller or disk if possible.

 

[Chadder007]

Originally posted by: sanzen07
Well I suppose I spoke too soon. Restarted today and it hung at the loading screen for about 3 minutes. I don't get it, why would it boot quickly sometimes but not other times?

Have you tried another SATA cable? Ive had a few systems that had trouble booting because of bad SATA cables before.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Smilin
obtaining an IP won't hold up a boot. In fact you can get all the way to your desktop without an IP. Memtest also wouldn't really apply here. If you were having bugchecks that would be different.

If you are cold booting (as opposed to a soft reset or resume from sleep) and you see random boot times then something is up with your hardware. A cold boot should be *consistently* good (everything ok) or *consistently* bad (potential software issue). If there is inconsistency then look to hardware...it doesn't matter if things "appear" ok or the system ran fine before the last format.

If you have data indicating a slow initialization out of a mass storage controller start there. Disable that controller or disk if possible.

I've definitely had not obtaining an IP hold up a boot, but that was back in the Win2000 days and it did it on the "loading your personal settings" part of the login process.

But considering that its pretty explicit that the IDE controller is the problem, I doubt it has anything to do with DHCP.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: sanzen07
No, I didn't see anything about which specific IDE channel was causing the issue. So I opened up the device manager and it says my hard drives are using Ultra DMA Mode 2. Shouldn't these be using UDMA 5 or something? I think that's what they were using under XP.

But what is weird is that the last 5 boots I have done have been quick and haven't hung at the loading screen. Weird, it seems like its fixed itself which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

That's wierd. IDE Harddrives should be using UDMA mode 5. If they are reporting a lower mode, that means that they have had interface errors, and the Windows' IDE driver has throttled them back to a slower speed. Eventually, it can cause your IDE channels to operate in PIO mode.

MS added a fix at some point during the XP days, that if it had so many consecutive correct operations, that it would throttle the speed back up a notch.

I believe, based on your information, that this is happening to your system. Something about the IDE interface is flaky and causing the slowdowns. Are you using a "JMicron" IDE controller? Some of them are known to have problems.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: Smilin
obtaining an IP won't hold up a boot. In fact you can get all the way to your desktop without an IP. Memtest also wouldn't really apply here. If you were having bugchecks that would be different.

If you are cold booting (as opposed to a soft reset or resume from sleep) and you see random boot times then something is up with your hardware. A cold boot should be *consistently* good (everything ok) or *consistently* bad (potential software issue). If there is inconsistency then look to hardware...it doesn't matter if things "appear" ok or the system ran fine before the last format.

If you have data indicating a slow initialization out of a mass storage controller start there. Disable that controller or disk if possible.

I've definitely had not obtaining an IP hold up a boot, but that was back in the Win2000 days and it did it on the "loading your personal settings" part of the login process.

But considering that its pretty explicit that the IDE controller is the problem, I doubt it has anything to do with DHCP.

Ah ok. I don't consider the "loading your personal settings" to be part of boot. I used to be on the "setup" team at MS that handled boot issues and once winlogon was fired up (ctrl-alt-del screen) the OS was started. Anything beyond that went to the perf team. network issues could indeed cause major slowdowns in the loading your personal setttings screen. Group policy, profiles are the first things that come to mind.

In this case he's at the "black" splash screen which is the initialization of remaining boot drivers and then the loading and initialization of system drivers/services. Once you hit "blank wallpaper" splash screen you are into automatics. There are a couple network related things that can hang here..domain controllers like to shit here if they can't reach dns.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: sanzen07
No, I didn't see anything about which specific IDE channel was causing the issue. So I opened up the device manager and it says my hard drives are using Ultra DMA Mode 2. Shouldn't these be using UDMA 5 or something? I think that's what they were using under XP.

But what is weird is that the last 5 boots I have done have been quick and haven't hung at the loading screen. Weird, it seems like its fixed itself which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

That's wierd. IDE Harddrives should be using UDMA mode 5. If they are reporting a lower mode, that means that they have had interface errors, and the Windows' IDE driver has throttled them back to a slower speed. Eventually, it can cause your IDE channels to operate in PIO mode.

MS added a fix at some point during the XP days, that if it had so many consecutive correct operations, that it would throttle the speed back up a notch.

I believe, based on your information, that this is happening to your system. Something about the IDE interface is flaky and causing the slowdowns. Are you using a "JMicron" IDE controller? Some of them are known to have problems.

Unless he's confusing that with his dvd-rom drive, which often runs at DMA2.