PC Startup is Slow After Boot Drive Upgrade

MrChip2 · 13 Dec 2014

I have a custom built PC with multiple internal HDDs that is taking a long time to boot ever since I upgraded the boot drive. The PC is running W7 Pro 64 bit. The old boot drive was a 128 GB SSD. For some unknown reason the bootfolder and bootmgr for the original drive was not located on the SSD - they were on a on a hidden System Reserved partition on one of the internal HDDs.

It took a while to get it to work, but I used Paragon's Migrate OS to SSD and cloned the 128 GB SSD onto a larger 256GB SSD. The boot folder and bootmgr are now on the larger SSD as well. The PC now boots exclusively from the new SSD. The problem is that the entire boot process that used to take 30 seconds or so now takes 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Here is a breakdown of the startup times from the moment I press the power button:

25 seconds - Windows starts to load
40 seconds - Windows 7 blue background appears and says please wait
2 minutes 15 seconds - Windows asks for Ctrl-Alt-Del and password
After I enter my password it takes...
6 seconds for the Desktop to appear and another 5-10 seconds for everything to load

I confirmed that the OS is no longer using the old System Reserved partition. That partition is no longer active and in addition I have been troubleshooting with all my drives disconnected except the new SSD. No matter what I try, the boot still takes 2.5 minutes. Here is what I have done so far:

I used Disk Alignment Test to confirm that all the internal drives are properly aligned
I used Rescue Kit free tool and ran the Update BCD records under Boot Corrector
I tried disabling the 6 start-up programs
I tried booting the PC in safe mode

None of the above have helped to reduce boot times at all. My applications still boot up quickly (most open in 5 seconds while Outlook needs 10 seconds to connect to Exchange). Does anyone have any suggestions on anything else I can try shy of reformatting the SSD and installing all my applications from scratch?

Could the slow boot be caused by problems in the System Registry? Thanks so much in advance for your help.

RogerR · 13 Dec 2014

It sounds like the system is scanning the bus for a drive that isn't there and timing out before defaulting to the OS drive. Try to connect your boot disk to the first physical SATA port and check the BIOS to ensure it is set to boot to that drive first.
You might expand on the specs in your system sig too so we have more clues.

MrChip2 · 13 Dec 2014

Hi Roger,
Perfect timing on your reply. I just got back and have a few minutes to work on this. I'm going to first fill out my system specs. That will take a little bit.

Roger: I just got a call and need to leave the house, so I may not be able to update for a little while. Last I checked the BIOS was set to first check the DVD drive and then check the boot SSD. No other drive is / was listed. I will confirm this.

My MOBO has two SATA6 GBs ports and 4 SATA 3 ports. The SSD boot is connected to one of the SATA 6GB ports. I will say that my MOBO had an old BIOS version, but a month ago or so I updated it to the latest version in a 6 or 7 step process. This was before the SSD upgrade.