Unknown 30 second boot delay after password entered

Hi Folks - need some advice here. I recently bought a new homebuilt system given my Dell box going south on me.

Here's the issue:

The boot time on the Dell box (XPS 430 Core 2 Quad - 8GB Ram - Radeon 4000x series) was virtually instantaneous from the time I hit enter on the password screen till I see the desktop.

However, the new box...

Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50 GHz 8MB Cache/Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H Motherboard/VisionTek 900339 Radeon HD 6850 Video Card - 1024MB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0/Seagate Barracuda 3.5" 1TB 7200 rpm 64 mb cache/16 GB Dual Channel DDR3 PNY SDRAM at 1067MHz/1333MHz

...takes almost 33 seconds from the time I hit enter on the password till I see the desktop!

Now here's what really doesn't compute. There is less data in the new install, and the page file is on another hdd, in additon to the 8 core processor with 16 GB of faster ram & an 80% free 1TB HDD.

I've been trying to all sorts of different approaches to try to resolve the 33 second problem:

1. Event viewer per this TechRepublic video: TR Dojo: Diagnose slow Windows 7 boot with Event Viewer | TechRepublic (no processes or programs indicated)

2. Clean booting per this page: How to perform a clean boot to troubleshoot a problem in Windows Vista or Windows 7

3. Bios default settings (not many changes anyways)

4. Manually checking ALL entries in the Device Manager for driver updates

5. Checking all manuf websites for new drivers or windows updates

6. Defragging

7. Avast full scans and MalwareBytes full scans (always clean) x 5

8. Blowing out old restore points

9. CCcleaner Registry scrubs

10. sfc/verifyonly - no problems found

But nothing seems to work. Given that a clean boot didn't resolve the issue, I have a feeling it might be a hardware timeout, but I have no idea if that's right, or how to trace it (the stuff I google is way above my head).

Anyone have any ideas?

The MSconfig is already set to 3 (should have mentioned that earlier).

I ran the boot trace, but I can't make heads or tails of how to read that thing. With 2.6 mil + entires, I guess i should cut my losses.

I would upload the log for some brave soul to peruse but it's 282 MBs for some reason.

I know your issue exactly. Your motherboard drivers are trying to update/check. I don't remember how to turn it off but I don't think it's in msconfig. I THINK you type gigabyte in your search bar and there will be some sort of program/updater to open and then within that you can turn off the automatic updating on restart.

EDIT: it might also just be in msconfig but i cant remember. Not at my computer right now. This is definitely your issue though.

Or it's through bios. Frig i cant remember.

Appreciate the reply (and the earlier replies).

Nope, Gigabyte's auto check is already turned off. Can't imagine there are enough bios updates that it needs to check every time there is a boot.

On a whim I uninstalled Avast in safe mode with their uninstall tool & rebooted, but that wasn't it.

Still getting the feeling it's a hardware timeout somewhere. I'm betting that's it because i had the same programs installed on the old system and roughly the same programs at boot on the new one. Since the HW changed, it's got to be something in either those drivers or a HW check of some kind.

I'm going to reach out to Gigabyte to see if it's something to do with the new MB. Since that thing is packed with all sorts of stuff, maybe it's the root cause somehow. Since I'm using everything on it except for the video, that's probably the issue.

Appreciate any other thoughts from any else tho.