Slow boot

that's way too long, run Memtest, if that is OK, disable the Sound card and see if it helps, then the Killer NIC, you should be booting in 30sec area, did you disable the on board Sound and NIC in BIOS

Slow startup is usually caused by an incompatible device/driver.

The first thing I would recommend is disconnecting everything that's not essential, and see does that solve the issue. If it does, then add devices back over time to see if/when the problem returns. For example: System is fine.. shut down... add the USB pastry~toaster... start up... OMG!! system is slow... Now you know what device is the cause.


You can also:

Run problem reports:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutoria [...] tails.html


Use the Troubleshooting tool:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutoria [...] oting.html


Start to Safe Mode and do things like repair your computer:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutoria [...] tions.html

Also, check out this site for more great information:
Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/728-63-slow-windows-b...

I hope this helps!

Brett M,
Windows Outreach Team

It takes 30 seconds to boot to desktop on most systems running Windows 7 with an SSD (if you time it from power button being depressed to desktop usable).

Overclocking your processor (and RAM, and Northbridge [MCH], Southbridge [especially SATA] without knowing for sure if the rig is sound (ie: 72 hours of MemTest86+ burn in, before installing the OS) may not help your boot time.

Sadly, todays hardware works even if SATA timings are slightly out, etc.


I'd suggest defragmentation, after restoring the important BIOS settings back to defaults (ie: RAM timings at the very least), then a cold boot.

Why? : Have you ever performed a defragmentation with faulty memory, or memory (or a CPU, or MCH / Northbridge, etc) running beyond specification - It's not fun (and it appears to work, the side effects are not noticed until weeks later, when both code and data has become corrupt).


Basically:

- Restore your system to more default settings and JEDEC 'safe' settings
- Make sure SuperFetch is enabled correctly
- Run a Defragmentation of your boot volume

- Disable any Services you are not using. [MSCONFIG, SERVICES.MSC, etc]

Realistically:

- You are only running a Western Digital 160gig sata II 16mb HDD

- Check that the drive is a 7200rpm model or better.

- To boot quickly you requires a 320GB, 7200rpm HDD or better having a SATA II and/or SATA 3.0Gbps interface means jack if the physical areal density of the medium can only move non-fragmented data at 24MB/sec

- Regardless of the number of platters on a 7200rpm HDD at 3.5" you'll notice that a 640GB HDD is going to move data about four times as fast as a 160GB HDD. They'll have similar seek times and so on though.

- Consider keeping your Operating System in a partition that is only in the first 10% to 28% of your HDD (the fastest part of the drive both areal density wise, and due to the media requring less track seeks due to that).

- Generally, to boot to desktop in 30 seconds under Windows 7 x64 requires an SSD, not a dated 160GB HDD.

- Windows 7 x86 boots faster as the files required to load the Operating System are smaller