ASUS Z97-A Extremely Slow Boot

Matthew Fox

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Jul 7, 2013
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I have built a system with an ASUS z97-a mobo. I have installed Win 8.1 on a WD RE4 2TB hdd. However, when I boot into windows in an attempt to load the mobo driver disk it takes upwards of 15 minutes to boot. Once in the OS (which does eventually load) everything moves so slow it is nearly impossible to do much of anything. Trying to uncompress a 100mb file would take 2-5 minutes. I have removed the GFX card (nVidia 970) and am just running off of the onboard adapter for the time being. The memory, CPU, and hdds are all showing up with their correct values and temps well within normal.

Note: I just have two hdds in the system, but not in a raid. Just one as OS and one as backup storage (neither are SSDs). Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
There are two issues that come to mind. You may have an issue with your RAM and or the system (virtual) memory.

The second is that you may to many programs that execute at startup.

Also your hard disk may need cleaned and defragged. If your internet is slow, the system may be trying to update causing the slowdown.
 

Matthew Fox

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Jul 7, 2013
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Every device in the system is new (all components have arrived in the mail within 5 days). The hard drive literally have nothing other than the basic windows install. All other ancillary devices on the mobo have been disabled to try to avoid any other conflicts.
 
Check the amount of system memory allocated on the hard drive. With a new system like that it could very well be trying to update. Is the internet connection connected to the internet? Is it a fast internet connection? Plus some devices come with bloatware in the installation discs. If you connected to the internet without a firewall / router, it probably does have malware on the system.
 

Matthew Fox

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Jul 7, 2013
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Thanks to everyone for their responses!

It turns out one of the two brand new Western Digital HDs was bad. After just running on a single drive, I started getting SMART failures. Reinstalled Win8.1 on the other drive and it works just fine.

Good QA, Western Digital. Keep up the good work!
 
I'm glad you were able to get your system running again. I usually have good luck with Western Digital hard drives, but it is always a possibility of hard drive failure. It could have been damaged in shipment, particularly if it was a bare OEM drive. I have wondered in the past how those bare drives survive bouncing around in a shipping box. What model of drive was it that failed?