Usually slow after startup, but not always. Reinstalled, swapped HDD.

Sometimes when I start up, everything is completely slow to respond and stays slow. Running an i5 with 6GB of RAM. Had an SSD originally in the machine, but I assumed with the problem I had that my SSD was dying, so I switched to a brand new WD black 750GB HDD and did a fresh install of Windows 7, and I'm still having the problem. Ran checkdisk on both the SSD and the new HDD, did a memtest on my RAM and no errors. The kicker is it's only slow most of the time. Sometimes it responds like a new fresh install of windows and is super snappy, like I'd expect. When this happens, I can hibernate and everything stays snappy when I resume the session. If I ever shutdown or restart, 80% of the time when it starts up it goes back to being incredibly slow. Makes me afraid to shut down now! It doesn't seem to be software, since the reinstall didn't fix it. It's not the hard drive, as I've switched it out. If it was RAM, wouldn't the memtest have found something? I ordered new RAM anyway, and it's arriving later this week, but what else could it be?

The slowness starts with the windows logo on start up, or if I go to a boot screen (regular, safemode, etc). If I go into the safemode selection screen, it takes several seconds to register the arrow keys, and after choosing a mode the screen disappears in chunks from top to bottom over about 7 seconds before it moves on. When everything is operating normally, this screen acts typically. The BIOS menus never seem to be slow.

I also tested to see if it was the graphics card drivers by rolling back to an older driver version before I had the issue. This also did not resolve it.

Additionally not having any problems running linux off a flash drive (debian wheezy). Going to take a hard look at device drivers now.

Try loading defaults in BIOS (either first screen or exit menu).

After loading defaults in the bios, I had an immediate shut down after the logo screen. Next attempt at booting up was slow again =/

This is the memory assessment speed on one of the rare good boots. Next post will have start up time and memory assessment on a slow boot (waiting on it right now to reboot).

Apparently my RAM is six times faster on a bad boot...