Pitiful boot time with OCZ Vertex 2 SSD HELP!

[SquirrelTakos]

I recently gave my system the same upgrade I gave to my laptop a while back, which was installing a SSD as the boot drive. My laptop boots in under 20 seconds, so I expected as much with this drive. Unfortunately, I am booting in what seems to be over 1-1.5 minutes. I did a completely new installation of Windows 7 on the drive (only C drive 120GB) and have two separate drives (250GB, 750GB) that house all of my data/documents/media/games/backups/etc.

In detail after going through the post, the Windows black boot screen starts up; however the little animated color windows don't appear until after more than 30 seconds. This happens every time I boot. After it's done booting, everything runs as it should; instant. Booting is the only thing I am not satisfied with.

Before anyone suggests firmware updates and AHCI. Both the firmware is current and AHCI was enabled earlier on. I also have done all the page file, defrag, etc tweaks. Also, the drive is set as the first booted drive in the BIOS. The drive seems to be running at optimal speeds in winsat disk (220MBps+ reads & writes) so I'm not sure what could be the problem. My only hunch is that my two other HDDs are somehow holding it back during the boot. If that is the case, what do I need to do to get this system up to speed?

C:\ 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD SATA
B:\ 250GB Seagate 7200RPM HDD SATA
E:\ F:\ G:\ 750GB Seagate 7200RPM HDD SATA

 

[gregrocker]

Turn off all Startup items in msconfig except AV and gadgets if u use them. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1401-startup-programs-change.html

Clean and defrag your HD perfectly with CCleaner and Auslogics Disk defragger/.

Use a free lightweight AV like MS Security Essentials with the Win7 firewall for best performance.

Check the Performance log for what is hanging startup:
Win7 troubleshooting fundamentals

If this doesn't help, use the tool which the pros use to trace boot hangs: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/140247-trace-windows-7-bootshutdownhibernatestandbyresume-issues/

 

[Bill2]

There are several methods to analyze slow boots. As already suggested, uncheck unessential items in the startup tab of MSCONFIG. Some apps also have settings where you can tell the app to start or not start at boot, you can check the larger apps for such settings.

To analyze boot times, you can run a basic tool like Soluto.

Or run a clean boot.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135

For a more detailed look, examine event viewer. Heres a good tut, its quite easy to do, dont be deterred by its complicated looks.

What

Heres a more complicated guide by Andre Zeigler.

Trace Windows 7 boot/shutdown/hibernate/standby/resume issues - MSFN Forum

 

[cluberti]

If you can get a trace using the guide (note you only have to install the performance toolkit and run one command - the xbootmgr boot trace) we can analyze the .etl for the delay. It is most onerous (it requires you to download the WDK 7.1 web installer, about 500K, then download/install the Performance Toolkit, about 8MB, then open an elevated cmd prompt and run one xbootmgr command), but it is also the most thorough. As I say, the data doesn't lie - it might be hard to read in a language you don't comprehend, but it's not lying either . Again, if you can get an xbootmgr trace, I can analyze the .etl (no need to make an xml, etc). Remember, you only need to do the top part - the "Analysis of the trace" section of the guide on MSFN is for those of us who want to analyze the trace ourselves; it's not needed to get the data to give to someone else!

 

[SquirrelTakos]

It turns out that the slow boot was being caused by what I thought I changed. I reconnected all the drives in a different SATA ports and it changed the boot priority of the drives. I changed the OCZ drive back to the first bootable drive, and everything is working as fast as it should. No more hangs. Thanks for your input everyone, I'll keep these troubleshooting ideas in mind for any future slow boots on other computers.

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