I am working on a laptop, just installed Windows 7. The immediately followed up with drivers. The entire time, the boot up times were abysmal. I assumed that it was either because the drivers weren't instaleld yet or the Windows updates weren't installed. So right after I got all the drivers installed, I installed the Windows updates. Still, the boot times are stupidly long. It seems to basically hang on the windows logo screen ("Starting Windows (C) Microsoft Corporation"). It still boots just fine and everything runs just fine after that, but it takes several minutes to get past the starting windows screen. This laptop is for a client, so I don't have much time to fiddle around with it, which is why I don't want to try reinstalling windows (that would take another day to get the OS and drivers and updates installed). Does anyone have any ideas as to why it takes so long? It isn't a program running at start up, of that, I am sure. I have never had this problem before, so I am a bit lost.
It is a Lenovo laptop that cam with Windows 8 (8.1?) pre-installed. The client wanted Windows 7, which is why I am installing it on there for him. I really don't want to hand him a laptop and be like "yeah, everything works just fine, just let it start up for 5 minutes. I don't know, get some coffee after hitting the power button or something."
EDIT: Forgot to mention, all drivers came straight from the lenovo website. I guess I could try seeing if there are newer drivers or something. Maybe updating the bios? I saw somewhere that someone suggested turning off legacy boot mode. I will give that a try once I have the time (getting into the lenovo bios is a real pain in the ass). Maybe the card reader is giving it issues. I will fiddle with drivers and bios settings more later. Input still very much appreciated. Hoping to get this sorted out as painlessly as possible.
When you say it boot times are "stupidly long," is the hard drive thrashing (you can hear it working/grinding away, performing lots of reads/writes)?
I had this problem with my computer, though I hadn't just installed Windows. The cause of my problem was Avast changing how much drive space was allocated for System Restore points to a ridiculous portion of the drive. A fix for it was listed online. If this is your problem, I can find the link, but I can't be bothered to at the moment.
Is there an antivirus program installed on the laptop? Is System Restore space set at a reasonable setting or the default? How much memory does this computer have?
8gb ram and 1tb hdd. No anti virus of any kind. It has been doing the long boot time thing since I first installed W7. There is basically nothing installed right now. I can't hear the hdd doing a lot of reads/writes (though I haven't listened for it). My assumption is that it isn't hardware related, rather it is a driver or other software related issue. I will check on chipset drivers when I get back to the laptop later today, but it is an APU, so the chipset driver should be integrated into the catalyst suite which is definitely installed. Maybe a newer version (if available) would fix things though. I will also listen for heavy read/writes while it is stuck when I get back to it just to make sure that isn't it.
Try enableing multi core boot (w7 will only use one core on boot) it may or may not make it a little faster depending on the cpu woth a try. And check the boot order in the bios make shure the hdd is the first boot option.
I already enabled multicore boot, and the boot order shouldn't affect this as it isn't until after windows has already started booting that it gets stuck. So it is after the computer has decided which to boot from.
And I am now able to listen to it during boot up, and it sounds like it is ticking. Maybe this is due to a faulty hdd? Anyone know the best way to check for that?
Not great speeds, but it shouldn't be taking a minute and a half to get past the starting windows screen. I timed it twice. Both times right at 90seconds.
Actually those read and write times kind of make sense for how slow it is to boot. W7 is not a great operating system in terms of boot times. W8 and W10 really improved in this regard.
From searches I've done, it seems not too far off for a 5400 rpm drive. I would like to look at other things which might be causing the problem and leave the hard drive for last. If it comes to that, we can deal with it, but I would like ot eliminate everything else first. It appears as though this is a 5400 rpm WD Blue 1tb 2.5" hdd, if that makes much difference.
Define "long", my HDD boot with Windows 8.1 was also fairly long when compared to an SSD boot. The HDD would be maxed out for a few minutes, wasn't pretty. Make 100% sure that you have the correct drivers installed though, chipset drivers made my HDD (the one in the ODD slot) run at SATA 1 speeds, so it's possible that is your problem.