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Boot up time slow Prior to loading Windows

Skychan

Active member
Joined
Nov 17, 2009
Messages
29
I am frustrated with how slow my motherboard takes to boot up before it starts loading Windows. It's about 17s before it reaches the OS selection screen. I have it set to auto choose OS after 1 second. It only takes another 15 seconds or so to reach Win 7 logon screen on my OCZ Agility SSD.

It seems to spend the vast majority of the bios boot time "Initializing USB Controllers" and detecting HDDs. As with everyone I have lots of USB devices and even if removing them were to help that's not really an option. I only have 3 sata HDDs and 1 sata DVD rom. SATA is set to AHCPI mode.

I have all other possible boot settings in the BIOS optimally configured. Quick boot is enabled. 1st boot device is set to the Agility SSD. Display logo disabled. Even "hit DEL button to enter setup" message on start up disabled.

I even manually set the 2 empty SATA ports from AUTO to "Not Installed".

Is there any way to make the BIOS not spend so much time Initializing USB Controllers and detecting HDDs? What if I disable USB devices in the BIOS? Will that only mean I'd need a non-usb keyboard to enter setup and hit F8 before Windows or does that mean USB devices won't even be available to Windows?

I've searched with google pretty thoroughly but most of what shows up are people who experienced extreme delays of like 45s. I guess I'm being kinda picky :p

My mobo is Asus P5E-VM HDMI.

Thanks in advance.
 

botat29

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 4, 2010
Messages
830
Location
Montreal
I see you have a SSD, so your BIOS is set on ACHI , you have a setting for the delay to detect the dvd in the advance ACHI setting , on Asus it's adjust to 35 sec, lower this value......

oups I just notice the age of this board, the setting is probably not there
 
Last edited:

Skychan

Active member
Joined
Nov 17, 2009
Messages
29
Ya, I've tried reducing that value of delay for detecting DVD in the advanced ACHI settings to 0s as well as SATA detect timeout to 0s but neither of those settings affected the time to detect the sata devices.

I'll try disabling Legacy USB support.
 

Skychan

Active member
Joined
Nov 17, 2009
Messages
29
Disabling legacy usb support didn't help at all.

I also tried setting PCIPnP setting to "yes" for plug in play OS but that didn't help.

There doesn't seem to be a way to manually enter info for HDDs so that they don't have to be auto detected.

This might be as fast as this mobo will get. Kinda sucks that mobos take longer to start up than an OS on an SSD.
 

draemn

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Joined
Dec 10, 2010
Messages
1,672
Location
Fort St. John, BC
Windows 7 on a SSD should take close to 30 seconds from power button press to windows desktop (if you have auto-login) at BEST on a desktop. If you get it under 30 seconds, that's amazing for a desktop mobo and not using RAID 0 SSD.

Expect 35-40 seconds on average for most normal SSDs and mobos.

Obviously disabling SATA controllers, etc that are not in use will help, but only 1-3 seconds at best. Under boot priority, ONLY have your boot drive set to first boot device and do not set anything under the other boot devices (i.e. don't have your optical drive set at all! This wastes 3-5 seconds).

IF you have a SSD that supports ITGC (do you have the Agility 1 or 2?), you can disable AHCI (and lose TRIM/SMART) to shave 5 seconds or so off that initial boot time. Also, if you're using RAID mode on your BIOS, that will greatly reduce boot time... look into a dedicated RAID controller then if speed is an issue and you want RAID.
 

Skychan

Active member
Joined
Nov 17, 2009
Messages
29
Thanks draemn but none of that applies to me. I've only got boot drive set as #1 boot and no others. It's Agility 1 and I don't wanna lose TRIM.

So since it's just under 40s to desktop I guess it's as good as it's gonna get.

Still frustrating that nearly half of that is before the OS even starts loading, oh well :p
 

Shadowmeph

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 3, 2007
Messages
6,443
Location
Aldergrove British Columbia
is it not software delay? my system boots and then it delays while it detects my xonardx sound card which take about 5-7 seconds , there was a setting I had to change which I don't seem to remember right now but it had to something to do with detecting some networking thing when I changed it to manual my system boot was allot faster.
once your system is up and running how many process's does the task manager show running?
 

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