Slow boot times after dual boot removal

i have an nvme boot drive that i migrated windows 10 to.
it was migrated from an ssd which i have since blanked completely and was using as a linux dual boot.
also i have various amounts of spinning rust.

when i migrated windows over from the ssd. my boot time was in the seconds from the splash screen. which was great for a few months.
then.
i install a boot grub to allow dual boot on the ssd. all seemed fine for 2 boots then all of a sudden windows is taking the same amount of time it took to load off the old ssd. (about 20 seconds.)

i thought ok this is a trade off between the boot grub and windows having to use the ssd boot sequence. so i didn’t bother looking further.
anyways i decided i needed to build my own labs. so sacrificed the ssd to cthulu and installed vbox.
after which i wiped the ssd and took it out the boot chain in eufi. and just use it as the storage for the vboxes.

then… boot to windows and 20 seconds ?..
but there’s no grub…
check msconfig all seems fine only 1 boot option.
i reboot and…
oh…
im hearing mechanical disk access … not drive spin up. but read and writes going to my spinning rust.

now this is an issue, as im supposed to be booting off the nvme but for some reason windows seems to be accessing my hdd’s for boot data?.

ive checked and none of the hdd’s has a eufi boot partition.
checked the nvme for errors from eufi
and have no recycle folders on any of the secondary drives.

any idea what’s going on here?
why is it reading data from the hdd?
got any recommendations on how to log what’s going on.
or a location of a log that will tell me?.
as the bootlog isnt really telling me much other than everything appears ok from the c: dirive and no apparent entries from any other drives.

so yeah any suggestions for a verbose bootlegger? or any idea whats going on from what ive said?.

mb gigabyte x470 gaming wifi
nvme adata sx8200pnp
ssd 840 evo
hdds 3 samsung spinpoint f3 s

thanks…

Unplug all drives except your Windows drive. Does it boot?
if yes, Image your Windows drive then zero it.
Install Windows 10.
Restore only the Windows partition into the new one - overwriting it and keep the new boot partition.

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Check your boot priorities in the BIOS. Make sure the drive Windows is installed on is the first in the list, if not, move it.

:smiley: thanks.
that worked. i pulled all the drives apart from the nvme and hey presto it booted in about 3 seconds after the splash :slight_smile:
GG …

not sure why it did that though.
the linux install adjusted the mbr?

ah well im glad its fixed and THANKS!.

I guess you have a bootloader on one of those other drives.
Plug them back in one by one until it boots slow again to find the offending drive.
Once you have found the drive then backup the contents of the drive then zero pass wipe it. Then reformat the drive and copy the old files back onto it.
Or go into disk management in windows and take a look at the partitions. Do any of them have a 100-500MB partition?

no mate no extra partitions, they are all simple volumes with 1 partition, apart from my 2tb which has 2… neither have child partitions, thats 1 of the first things i looked for.
i plugged the drives back in and all was fine. till i installed the vm’s then it slowed again after 1 of the labs wanted to install the grub on the primary partition. rather than the vmpartition where it was supposed to. i said no and next boot was slow again.

yeah having no luck here… eventually i decided I’ll reinstalling my build.
its only 5 installs… how long can that take O.o
windows 10x2, windows server, ubuntu and kali >.< this wont take long at all :frowning: .

i wiped my o.s. installed fresh, added the vbox and labs, and next boot slowed down.
so, im gonna pull the drives again and try the one at a time approach :smiley:

and yeah i wanna stick my head in a bucket …

I had total system slow down too doesn’t post because of failing Sata drive.
Look and test the drive it might be giving errors to the sata controller which is slowing down everything else.

nah its not the drives… tested them all and while some are 3-4 years + they all passed crystaldiskmark error checking with 90%+ ratings. my nvme came last saying its now at 85% even though its barely 2 years old. but its still reading and writing at its native speeds.

turns out virtual box and the vm’s its connecting to are the problem.
not entirely sure why but, its checking the drive i put the labs on as soon as windows starts.
i fresh installed windows and it was fine. i installed vbox and 3 labs, next boot was back to slow booting.
i guess i will have to set the vbox services to automatic (delayed start)

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