1. On the reinstall, leave the HDD disconnected. If you do not, windows puts a hidden recovery partition on it, making future hdd removal difficult.
As to startup:
1. In the bios, look for adapters or devices that you do not use or are missing.
It takes a delay for the bios to detect something missing.
2. Once the install is complete, make the SSD the first bootable device.
If, for example a cd or usb is higher in the list, it takes time to wait and see that the device is not there.
3. If you have defaulted to memory checking, turn that off.
4. Run msconfig and look at the list of startup tasks.
disable starting anything not necessary.