Slow windows boot all of a sudden

[FoldingZebra]

Hey guys, I have a crucial M4 that was only on the windows loading screen for a few seconds. Last night it started to sit there for much longer. I had to reinstalled windows today and it is still slow. Every once in awhile it goes fast. I benched it and it is still reading the same as it did when I first got it.

Read

523.1 MB/s
426.3 MB/s
25.24 MB/s
179.2 MB/s

Anyone know what's up?

 

[RetiredChief]

What does AS SSD show for driver.
My guess, is (1) a problem with trim - windows will only show that it is enabled, not that the drive is accepting it and working. or (2) something in the background is slowing it down.

Added: have you updated the firmware to ver 0009??
Current firmware is also shound with AS SSD.

 

[Chainzsaw]

How much longer was it sitting at the loading screen, before going slow, and after?

What size is your M4 SSD?

Before rebuilding your computer, how much space did you have left on your SSD, and did you do a lot of writes to it?

Is your SSD set to AHCI in your BIOS?

Did you check to make sure the SATA cables aren't loose going to your M4?

 

[FoldingZebra]

Before it was slow, it sat on the windows load screen for 5ish seconds. Now it takes like 90 seconds.

the drive is 64GB

Before reinstalling I had ~30gig left.

My SSD is set to AHCI in BIOS.

I did reseat my sata cables.

 

[FoldingZebra]

What does AS SSD show for driver.
My guess, is (1) a problem with trim - windows will only show that it is enabled, not that the drive is accepting it and working. or (2) something in the background is slowing it down.

Added: have you updated the firmware to ver 0009??
Current firmware is also shound with AS SSD.

I don't see where it says the driver version.

After I get into windows, everything is fast as hell. Just the loading screen that is black with the windows logo on it takes a long time now.

When I got the driver I updated the Firmware, does it need to be done again after a reinstall?

EDIT: I see in AS SSD that the firmware is 0009

 

[Chainzsaw]

Once you update the firmware, theres no need to do it again after reinstall (because the firmware resides on a chip on your SSD, the controller, not the actual SSD's flash space).

That really is odd. going from 5 seconds to 90 is absurd.

Seems like you have everything set correctly....maybe try a different cable, or even a different sata slot on the motherboard?

 

[Chainzsaw]

Try this out:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Download Autoruns, install it. Check to see what is running during start up.

Do you have antivirus and anti malware installed on your system? You might want to do a safe mode scan.

 

[RetiredChief]

Fireware OK, do not need to redo
Driver msahci is OK and should allow trim to Pass
Partition alignment is OK.

Your Benchmark is a little lower than mine, But I'm using Intel chipset with iaSTor as the driver. That performs better than msahci default driver.

Since it benchmarks OK (DO NOT RUN ofter) and only appears slow dring windows 7 load, Im guessing that something that windows is tring to load is slowing you down.

Good catch on "Free space". Note space used is sometimes not correct.
Hibernation file can take upto amount of ramd on HDD - I always disable it.
Page file normally set to around 1.5x to 2x amount of ram. Set min and max to the same value: if 4 gigs of ram set min and max both to 1024 mb, if 6 or more gigs of ram reduce to 512mb.
Limit the size that restore points can use on disk.

After doing this reboot and let sit idle for (most say over night) loged off and at idle.

 

[FoldingZebra]

Fireware OK, do not need to redo
Driver msahci is OK and should allow trim to Pass
Partition alignment is OK.

Your Benchmark is a little lower than mine, But I'm using Intel chipset with iaSTor as the driver. That performs better than msahci default driver.

Since it benchmarks OK (DO NOT RUN ofter) and only appears slow dring windows 7 load, Im guessing that something that windows is tring to load is slowing you down.

Good catch on "Free space". Note space used is sometimes not correct.
Hibernation file can take upto amount of ramd on HDD - I always disable it.
Page file normally set to around 1.5x to 2x amount of ram. Set min and max to the same value: if 4 gigs of ram set min and max both to 1024 mb, if 6 or more gigs of ram reduce to 512mb.
Limit the size that restore points can use on disk.

After doing this reboot and let sit idle for (most say over night) loged off and at idle.

I don;t really understand what you are telling me to do here.

 

[FoldingZebra]

Try this out:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Download Autoruns, install it. Check to see what is running during start up.

Do you have antivirus and anti malware installed on your system? You might want to do a safe mode scan.

Ran this, though I am not sure what to do with the info.

No anti Virus at the momment, just installed windows.

 

[RetiredChief]

There are three things that I always to. From a previous post of mine:
3 Things that I normally do for an SSD:
.. (1) disable hibernation - save 4 -> 6 gigs
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730
.. (2) Set page file (virtual memory) min and max to the same value, ie 4 gigs ram set it to 1024 mb. > 4 gigs ram set to 512mb. And you can redirect it to the HDD to save alittle more (Very slight performance hit). This save upto 6 gigs
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Change-the-size-of-virtual-memory
.. (3) manage restore points. limit the number of restore point or disable. This one if not done can eat up space in the long haul.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/318 [...] windows-7/
.. (4) One Final Important step: Use windows 7 backup (Under Control panel -> System & Security) and creat a image backup for your “C” drive. You can place on your internal HDD (and as a added precaution copy to BU drive). As long as you have the Windows Installation disk, you do NOT need to create the “Restore Disk” when prompted.

 

[FoldingZebra]

well, I think I found the issue. I went into my BIOS and was looking things over. Under the Voltages it said not optimized. I reset it to default and loaded windows snappy again. Changed my CPU voltage back to my OC setting and restart. Voltage said optimized now, and booted into windows fast. Seems odd, not really sure what was going on. Thanks for all the help. This seems like an unlikely reason to case the boot to take up so much time.

 

[FoldingZebra]

There are three things that I always to. From a previous post of mine:
3 Things that I normally do for an SSD:
.. (1) disable hibernation - save 4 -> 6 gigs
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730
.. (2) Set page file (virtual memory) min and max to the same value, ie 4 gigs ram set it to 1024 mb. > 4 gigs ram set to 512mb. And you can redirect it to the HDD to save alittle more (Very slight performance hit). This save upto 6 gigs
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US [...] ual-memory
.. (3) manage restore points. limit the number of restore point or disable. This one if not done can eat up space in the long haul.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/318 [...] windows-7/
.. (4) One Final Important step: Use windows 7 backup (Under Control panel -> System & Security) and creat a image backup for your “C” drive. You can place on your internal HDD (and as a added precaution copy to BU drive). As long as you have the Windows Installation disk, you do NOT need to create the “Restore Disk” when prompted.

the page file link I think is broken, but I'll look into it. Good idea on the restore points and the back up. I'll do that too. I disabled hibernation, so thanks for that as well. You guys are always so helpful here. Thanks a lot.

 

[Chainzsaw]

Well glad you got it going. The last thing i was going to suggest was to de-oc your CPU.

I'm guessing maybe there was a slight power bump, or maybe a BIOS issue that may have caused your "un optimized settings" in your BIOS.

And you really should get an antivirus and anti malware program...viruses can steal valuable CPU cycles (causing slowdowns).

 

[FoldingZebra]

I'm gonna grab AVG, but I really just installed windows so I hadn't gotten to it yet. is there anything better than AVG to use?

 

[RetiredChief]

Try this for page file: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Change-the-size-of-virtual-memory

It is possible in your OC that the PCI-e buss speed got changed. It should be 100 MHz. If off by more than 5 MHz it can cause strange things. Perhaps it got changed and in redoing it was rest back to 100 MHz - Just a guess.

Just check the link and it should work.

 

[Chainzsaw]

Some people like AVAST! or Avira Antivirus.

Also Microsoft Security Essentials is pretty good - you can download it at the microsoft.com website.

Well since this is getting off topic i'm done here. Take care.

 

[FoldingZebra]

ok, thanks all! I did the page file and everything and I will look into the security. Thanks again! Wish I could chose more that one for best answer :/

 

[FoldingZebra]

Best answer selected by FoldingZebra.