Win7 start time suddenly much longer.

[bat123man]

Hello,

I have been running Win7 64-bit for 2 years. My boot drive is an Intel SSD. Win7 used to load very quickly. It would come up with the Windows logo and quickly flick to the login screen. Boot Performance tracked in Event Viewer - Application and Services - Microsoft - Windows - Diagnostics Performance - Operational would generally report 45 seconds or so. Recently, for no reason I can yet discern, that has jumped to 218 seconds. I have looked for 101 Event IDs (application boot performance), there are a few listed, but usually with very small footprints (degradation of 300 ms). Nothing which explains the 3 additional minutes.

When the OS boot now, it comes up to the Windows splash screen, and as the 4 colours are coming together, it hangs. At first I thought there was something seriously wrong, so I restarted via the power switch, and ran Startup Repair. It ran, but boot was the same. After a few more power button restarts, thinking I had a very serious problem, I sat there stumped and..... it eventually booted! The 4 colours eventually started moving again, and the system booted. That is what I experience every time now. There is roughly a 3 min pause during the boot sequence, then it proceeds as normal.

Things I have tried :
- Updated to latest Nvidia chipset and GPU drivers.
- Have almost nothing in Startup when Running MSConfig
- Ran Intel's SSD tool. Reports everything A-OK.
- Made Boot Sequence "Hard Drive" only so it doesn't search for CD drive.
- Ran Windows Update to ensure all latest critical patches installed (for all I know, this caused it).


Any idea how I can figure out what is causing it?

Win7 64-bit
4 GB PC6400 RAM
Asus P5N-E SLI (not in SLI)
80GB Intel X-25 SSD
GTX 570

 

[smorizio]

have you tried removing your anti virus and reinstalling it?? sometime they get damaged and need to be reinstalled. also do you have more then one of them installed or more then one anti malware program loaded. when the last time you ran ccleaner and check that the registry was fine???

 

[Hawkeye22]

You need to look at more than just event id 101.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/use-windows-7-event-viewer-to-track-down-issues-that-cause-slower-boot-times/3253

 

[bat123man]

Thanks, should have added to my list of things I have tried.

Ran CCleaner this morning. It removed about 1.4 GB of stuff, which is about normal when I run it. I also fixed the Registry with CCleaner. When I run that (less often than the clean up), it always finds a handful of issues.

I haven't tried removing and reinstalling AV. I'll try that.

I periodically have more than one A-M installed, but currently only have Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free edition installed. I have installed SuperAntiMalware in the past, but have long since uninstalled it.

BM.

 

[festerovic]

Thats a good article hawkeye. Thanks for posting that.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Thats a good article hawkeye. Thanks for posting that.

No problem. We are all here to learn.

 

[bat123man]

OK, thanks for that article, that was mighty interesting. I now have 2 custom views, Boot Time and Boot Degradation. My boot time continues to be abysmal, but I have some clues. The last boot was OK at 107 seconds, with a 59 second delay caused by an Event 109. That event was initialization of the Nvidia Serial ATA controller. I went into Device Manager, IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, and was very surprised to see that the Nvidia driver was an old one from 2007. I had specifically upgraded that controller to version 11.xx a few months ago. I also remember that when I last ran Windows Update, it suggested I upgrade the Nvidia ATA Controller driver. I said OK, and I believe that is when the driver was "upgraded" to an ancient version.

I selected "Update Driver", "Browse my Computer", "Let me Pick from a list of Device Drivers on my computer", and was presented with a list of 5 different choices :

Nvidia nForce Serial ATA Controller version 10.6.0.319 [06/08/2010]
Nvidia nForce Serial ATA Controller version 11.1.0.33 [04/08/2009]
Nvidia nForce Serial ATA Controller version 11.1.0.43 [09/04/2010]
Nvidia nForce Serial ATA Controller version 5.10.2600.998 [09/08/2007]
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

The 2007 driver had been selected presumably by Windows Update. I selected the latest 11.1.0.43 driver, and rebooted. Boot time skyrocketed to 352 seconds, and there were no other recorded 101-109 events.

Do you think I have to reboot several times to give the driver a chance to initialize or do whatever it takes to change versions? At any rate, just for fun, I changed it to "Standard Dual Channel PCI Controller" as I had read that was a way to get rid of periodic NVSTOR64 error messages. Boot time was 356 seconds.

I am back to using the 11.1.0.43 driver, but I appear to be no closer to figuring out why my boot time is so long.

Thanks,
BM.

 

[smorizio]

try using the newest driver from nvidia and then on your data drive..run some smart and vendor tools. it might be data drive or the cd-rom that holding the post time.

 

[Hawkeye22]

I never let windows update my hardware. I always go to the manufacturer's web site to get the newest drivers.

I don't think you have to reboot for the drivers to take effect otherwise it would ask you to reboot. Vista and 7 are better at not having to reboot so often after a driver change.

 

[bat123man]

Well, I really like the custom Views in Event Viewer, but the problem just keep piling up. It seems there is always something causing a boot delay. The last one was an additional 58 seconds caused by Microsoft Windows Search Indexer. I have disabled that service. The previous two were my old friend the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller, degradation of 59 seconds, and then a whopping 280 seconds. I suspect it was because I kept changing drivers, so Windows was doing something to catch up. The before that, it was Java for 33 seconds (updating itself maybe?).

It seems every time I boot, there is something new causing a lag. The 4 colours in the Windows logo always freeze at the same point, and resume a minute or two later.

One thing I found out, my SSD is not aligned <sigh>. That appears to be quite a challenge to fix without reinstalling Win7.

 

[Hawkeye22]

One thing I found out, my SSD is not aligned <sigh>. That appears to be quite a challenge to fix without reinstalling Win7.

This ususally happens when you clone a hard drive to a SSD or you had your bios set to IDE instead of AHCI. A clean install to a SSD is preferable to a cloning from a hard drive.

 

[bat123man]

Or, when you have a motherboard that does not support AHCI, as I do (Asus P5N-E SLI).