New PC is slow to boot.

[just_laze]

Hi,

I've just built my girlfriend a PC, you can view the specs here:

Once in Windows it's incredibly fast and i'm very happy with it, but while loading Windows the loading progress bar must cross the screen upward of 10 times. I've ran bootvis and this did not improve the boot speed.

Are there any factors that could be causing it to boot slow? An option in the BIOS perhaps?

I may be over-reacting, perhaps the board isn't optimized to boot fast, but i have a 3 year old NF7-S that beats this Core2Duo box into Windows :-/.

laze.

[teachmech]

Try setting all the ide and sata ports not being used in the bios from auto to none.
Then in device manager again set all not used sata and ide channels to none.
This worked for me in speeding up windows start up.

Also a program tunexp has some excellent fast start options and rearranges boot files to ensure a speedy start up.

[just_laze]

Hi,

I have all ide/sata channels not in use set to 'not installed', i see no option to do this in device manager, perhaps it's board/controller specific.

laze.

[teachmech]

In my device manager under ide ata/atapi controllers it lists all the sata and ide controllers, when i select a controller and right click and select properties I get on the advanced tab and option I can change from auto to none.

[Weetabix]

This slow boot didn't start happening after a windows update did it? I've had this before, where from a clean install, downloaded some updates and then had a boot time of about 3 minutes. I tried everything, but in the end had to re-install again. Grrrrrrrrrrrr

[kidzer]

Are the machines joined on a domain?

If you have that machine set to be able to access a share on another machine that isn't switched on, this can cause a delay in startup.

I think i've got that right anyways

[kalniel]

My gf has a very similarly spec'd system and it boots very quickly, so I think you can rule out hardware.

[just_laze]

Hi Kalniel,

Do you use the onboard graphics? I have spoken to Gary at Anandtech who reviewed this board and he told me that Windows takes several seconds longer to load when the onboard graphics are used.

laze.

[MSIC]

It looks like a nice system, so it ought to boot quicker....
I think you have to remember that Windows was cooked up by three old witches in a dark cave, and as such it is a bit of a dark art. Have you tried the old classic of a rabbits tail and a crows feather into the CD tray, then booting from that?

My honest advice is turn on the PC 30 seconds before you want to use it, and ignore the wait. Frustrating, and i sympathise.

[kalniel]

Hi Kalniel,

Do you use the onboard graphics? I have spoken to Gary at Anandtech who reviewed this board and he told me that Windows takes several seconds longer to load when the onboard graphics are used.

laze.

For a couple of weeks we used onboard yes, it still booted about the same length of time as the graphics card she's now got, marginally quicker perhaps with the onboard.

[just_laze]

Right,

So how many tmies would you say the progress bar crosses the screen during loading?

laze.

[redsky009]

Found this quite helpful on my old pc:
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/n1041630673

Edit: you have to wade through that a bit but best bits are using bootvis, tweaking your services and disabling File and Printer sharing if you're on a network

[kalniel]

I've not seen the system for a while, and it's not the sort of thing I have memorised sorry! I'd guess at about 4-6.

Is it ok to use bootvis on a dual core system? I wouldn't like to (well, actually I did, and it didn't help - if anything it messed things up a bit )

[Craig321]

Install the drivers, always works for me

Our server PC takes a lot of time to boot if you don't have the IDE/SATA drivers installed.

Also, make sure your drives are plugged in correctly. e.g. the main one being master etc.

[just_laze]

Hi,

I've resolved the problem.

I had all drives installed as 'cable select' and was waiting on one more drive to arrive, the cd/dvd-writer. For this reason i had the plain ol' dvd-rom attached as a secondary drive, once i attached the cd/dvd-writer to the primary position the PC booted far quicker.

Perhaps Windows was confused that it couldn't locate the primary-ide drive.

Thank you for all your replies.

laze.

[MSIC]

Ok, good.
You didn't have the DVD ROM on the same cable as the hard drives did you? This of course also slows down the PATA IDE hard drive to the slower ATA33 speeds (or at least used to, i havent tried in a few years and perhaps XP got around this).