Windows 7 slow boot-up times (on an i7)

DECEiFER

I've noticed since installing Windows 7 on my new i7 920 machine on and from Saturday just gone that it boots (from POST to complete readiness in Windows) even slower than it did on my Core 2 Duo installation. I'm using the same hardware in my i7 machine, apart from my P6T motherboard and Corsair 6GB DDR3-1600MHz RAM, and I'm using the same 1TB Hard Drive (Samsung Spinpoint F1) and 2 x 500GB IDE drives for storage as I did on my previous rig. I reckon there's a delay on one of the processes or services. Thing is, I'm loading up less than I was before, and nothing different. Same everything, including video driver with CCC. I'm stumped! Either that or it's the hard drive, but again, it was faster to boot on my Core 2 Duo rig.

I wonder if there's a way to check the time taken for processes and services to start, to find what is causing the delay, where it's getting stuck?


Note: The i7 is reading all 8 threads and it's not using a great deal of the CPU. The RAM is in the region of 1-1.5GB used after start-up on my x64 7.


Many thanks for reading and any help you can provide.

youcancallmeal

One way to rule things out would be to open up msconfig and go to start up. Untick one of the start up items and reboot, repeat until you've found what is causing the slow bootup? If its still booting slow after all that then maybe check the event viewer and see what else is being started up on boot. I have Win7 and boot time is very quick, maybe 10-20 secs after post completes.

DECEiFER

youcancallme>al wrote: »

One way to rule things out would be to open up msconfig and go to start up. Untick one of the start up items and reboot, repeat until you've found what is causing the slow bootup? If its still booting slow after all that then maybe check the event viewer and see what else is being started up on boot. I have Win7 and boot time is very quick, maybe 10-20 secs after post completes.

I will try that process of elimination. I do already cut out certain items like QuickTime, Groove Monitor, Java, etc. They're a pain.

I do start up things like MSN, Skype, Google Talk, among other things, and have been doing so since my P4 days. CCC is also a hog, and I think ESET is one too.

witnessmenow

Do you have an external HD plugged in? It adds 10 seconds or so to my boot time for windows 7

Kinetic^

Msconfig is the way to go. Would you also not look at combing programs like MSN & Google Talk in to an application like Pidgin? I use it on Windows & Linux, works really well.

DECEiFER

witnessmenow wrote: »

Do you have an external HD plugged in? It adds 10 seconds or so to my boot time for windows 7

No, but I'm using a 1TB Spinpoint F1 with 3 partitions in total, 2 x 80GB partitions and the remainder of the space on the 3rd partition, along with 2 x WD IDE 500GB drives.

DECEiFER

Kinetic^ wrote: »

Msconfig is the way to go. Would you also not look at combing programs like MSN & Google Talk in to an application like Pidgin? I use it on Windows & Linux, works really well.

I've thought about it before, but I do like the clients themselves. Well, MSN/WLM itself is a nice looking client. I use Google Talk as a notifier more than anything else, so it's a chat and notifier in one (as opposed to using the Gmail Notifier).

Kinetic^

I was the same with the notifier but I use the gmail notifier plugins available in Firefox & Chrome now.

youcancallmeal

What about network connections? Do you have NAS at home or anything that it might be trying to establish a connection to?
Also in Windows 7 I have noticed that hard drives operate a little differently than in XP, for example I have numerous storage drives and if they are idle for around 20 mins then when I go to access them it can be up to 10 seconds to spin up and respond. Never had that issue in XP? This probably has nothing to do with your slow start up but just thought I would throw it out there?

If all else fails google it, there seems to be a ton of queries out there similar to this one and you might find the answer your looking for among them.

DECEiFER

Kinetic^ wrote: »

I was the same with the notifier but I use the gmail notifier plugins available in Firefox & Chrome now.

Ah that's not a bad idea! I'll consider this... It's a lot to start up at once, three IM clients.

JohnK

witnessmenow wrote: »

Do you have an external HD plugged in? It adds 10 seconds or so to my boot time for windows 7

Similar with myself although on XP, when externals are connected it can add a few minutes to the boot time.

DECEiFER

youcancallme>al wrote: »

What about network connections? Do you have NAS at home or anything that it might be trying to establish a connection to?
Also in Windows 7 I have noticed that hard drives operate a little differently than in XP, for example I have numerous storage drives and if they are idle for around 20 mins then when I go to access them it can be up to 10 seconds to spin up and respond. Never had that issue in XP? This probably has nothing to do with your slow start up but just thought I would throw it out there?

If all else fails google it, there seems to be a ton of queries out there similar to this one and you might find the answer your looking for among them.

Yes, my IDE drives do that spin up crap. Even if I put on a video/movie, after a while it stalls and takes about 5-10 seconds to come back to life. It happened on three different motherboards whilst using Vista and 7, but never in XP.

I don't use a NAS. I have a simple network setup, just a router/modem (ADSL) to the PC via a Cat6 network cable.

But you'd think that with the i7 it would be quicker, even if the hard disk is the bottleneck. I've been using Windows 7 since July 2009 the RTM was announced, and it's always ran fine, and with a tad faster boot-up time with my E8400. The conditions of the startup are identical, if not even more curtailed now.

I actually Googled before I came to post here yesterday, but I must keep trying more links from the results to research it further. I'll try all of your suggestions, though, as they are common sense more than anything else. I should have tried them from the very beginning. I've been using computers since 1992, so you'd think I'd have done all that already! :eek:


Thanks everyone for waking me up, all your replies are truly appreciated.

MrVestek

That's a default power setting to make the computer more 'green' by using less energy.

It can be turned off by using the power control settings in control panel.

DECEiFER

Achilles wrote: »

That's a default power setting to make the computer more 'green' by using less energy.

It can be turned off by using the power control settings in control panel.

Trudat. I set the shutdown of the hard disks to 9999 minutes Never. Again, common sense escaped me!

youcancallmeal

Another option is to start in safe mode. That way you could rule out software (besides Windows itself of course)

DECEiFER

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Another option is to start in safe mode. That way you could rule out software (besides Windows itself of course)

Yup, I haven't gotten around to doing that just yet. Will probably do that when I'm around later.

Nollog

I had an IDE DVD Burner in my i7 build until 2 weeks ago, now it boots up way faster and doesn't get stuck on "My Computer".
Try booting without the ide drives connected to see if it makes a difference.