Slow boot on Windows 7 with X25-m

[jamesmc]

Hi everyone,

I just bought an x25-m 80gb gen.2 to use it as a boot drive and to speed up certain big applications.

I upgraded the firmware to the latest release to gain TRIM support and running the drive with AHCI along with
the native Windows driver.

The problem is that (after upgrading the firmware ? can't remember exactly) Windows take like 60 seconds to get
to the desktop after having entered the password. The first part of the boot procedure seems to be as fast as expected.


Does anyone has an idea of what is going on here ?


Thanks a lot !

 

[sub mesa]

May not be related to your disk at all, but some network timeout or some service that doesn't respond in time.

Don't have any real advise though; other than a fresh OS reinstall.

 

[sminlal]

I undertstand that you can get lengthy delays at logon time if you have offline files enabled and the system is trying to establish a network connection. Try disconnecting the network cable / wireless connection before you boot and see if that solves the problem - if so then that's the likely culprit.

 

[darkguset]

Some drives have problems with AHCI, try disabling that and retry.

 

[RetiredChief]

AHCI is the prefered setting for a SSD under win 7.

Concur with sminlal and Sub mesa on their ideas.
One thin you might try is crystal diskmark and verify that you are getting nominal read/writes (primarilly in the 4 K random test). If you are then the Drive is not the problem but you have a program and/or driver giving win 7 fits.

 

[notty22]

I had something similar happen. It was a external usb drive. Windows all of a sudden wanted to do its thing at boot, where prior it hadn't.

 

[darkguset]

Something to do with the new firmware? I think the best place to have a look would be in Intel's SSD forums regarding that firmware and any new problems, etc.

 

[jamesmc]

I tried to boot without LAN cable and USB drive to no avail, still stuck after the password for 30 seconds.

I also checked the speeds with AS SSD benchmark and they're great. It also confirmed that the drive is correctly setup using msahci.sys.

Sadly, the Intel SSD forum didn't have any posts related to my problem even though there was still some useful information.

I think sub mesa is right saying a fresh reinstall is needed even that's what I feared

I'll continue looking for other ways to solve this for a few days (I won't cry for 1 min per day, even though it's sad for a 280CHF/260USD drive...).

Anyway, thanks for the answers !

 

[sminlal]

Before rebuilding, I'd try stripping the system down as much as possible by removing as many attached devices as you can. Remove the mouse and any USB devices, including internal card readers. Disconnect any unneeded SATA drives other than the boot SSD. ...and so on.

If the logon improves, then add devices back one at a time to see which one is causing the problem.

Another tack is to create a new account and try logging on to it. If it logs on quickly, then there's something about your default account configuration - you may have some program running at login time that's causing issues.

 

[jamesmc]

I created another admin account and the boot time was approximately 15sec. Like you suggested there's something about my account that's not right...

I used msconfig to shutdown startup items and disabled my ramdisk. I also thought that moving TMP&TEMP folders to my regular could maybe cause the problem but the other account shares the same parameters apparently so I ruled it out.

There's obviously a simple thing I missed... I could have messed up something using SSD Tweaker about prefetching so I'll look into it.

 

[RetiredChief]

Have you tried running a registry cleaner, ie CCLeaner.

 

[jamesmc]

Didn't do anything. Still starts slowly...

 

[sminlal]

Have you checked the event logs? They may provide a clue to what's going on at the times in question.

 

[JessicaD]

Jamesmc,

Have you checked msconfig to see the startup items that are set to load after log in? Also, Microsoft does have an official Windows 7 Support Forum located here http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/w7itpro/ . It is supported by product specialists as well as engineers and support teams. You may want to also check the threads available there for additional assistance and guidance.

Jessica
Microsoft Windows Client Team

 

[jamesmc]

Thanks Jessica for the head's up !

I found some ideas to solve my problem by following your link. It seems that it is some kind of "profile corruption" or roaming profile size.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproperf/thread/bd766f0d-5b1f-48a8-883f-7e3566c3131d/


http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/Windows7/Fix-a-corrupted-user-profile


I'll try tomorrow morning (GMT+1) the solutions above and give a status update.

Cheers,

 

[darkguset]

SSD Tweaker does it again... lol
Seriously, if everything is running fine then leave as is. *tweaking* stuff without really knowing what you are doing will usually result in things turning fubar. Then again this is the better (and my preferred) way of learning.

 

[darkjuggalo2000]

did yo go into your msconfig and find out what is stating up when windows boots? sometimes this can slow startup alot!!!

 

[jamesmc]

It was my profile that was corrupt. Not sure what caused it between Firefox/Thunderbird tinkering and SSD Tweaker.

@darkguset : Generally, I also do thing the "hard" way but as I'm not still as familiar with Vista/7, I trusted the recommendation of idontrememberwich reputable website for SSD tweaker. Lesson learned.

Thanks you guys for your input !