Windows 7: Windows 7 boot is slow (2-3 minutes) without boot manager

I have a 64G SSD drive and a 300G hard drive.

I set c drive drive to be the whole SSD drive. Cd drive to d:.
and an e drive to be 100G. (out of the 300G.

I am running an AMD phenom quad core with 12 G of memory.

I have spent hours on this and read countless posts.

I have tried diabling all start programs. I downloaded all of the latest drivers from Gigabyte and alsso got the AMD series series 7 chip set drivers from AMD.
I have narrowed it down to:

When windows boots, it sits at starting windows for 2-3 minutes and then loads.
I have set custom events for ids 100-110 and it shows nothing or warnings on event 100 with no details. Once the balls become the windows icon, windows brings up my long on.

Here is the vital clue, I installed Norton ghost 15. when I copy the drive to a third hard drive, the boot manager comes up.

When I select boot windows 7, it load starting windows and then the balls with the windows icon almost instantly.

It stays like this way even when I disconnect the 3rd drive.


If I remove boot manager, I am back to 2-3 minutes to get past starting windows.

I would uninstall Norton and make sure all traces of its infection are gone.

We use lightweight free tools here for best performance of Windows 7: Micrsoft Security Essentials with the Windows 7 firewall, Partition Wizard bootable CD for fail-safe partitioning of every imaginable variety, and built-in Windows 7 backup imaging or free Macrium Reflect.

If the problem persists use the tool the Pro's use to trace slow startup: Gathering a Startup, Shutdown, Sleep, Hibernate, or Reboot Trace - Windows 7 Forums