Windows Boots up slow

[Overkill0001]

This is my new PC I built it a couple days ago:

Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Asus M2N-E AM2 nForce 570 Ultra
DDR2 800 2x512MB Corsair XMS2

Everything is running great, stable and nice performance. One thing I did notice was it seemed like Windows XP (sp2) is taking forever to boot up. I didn't realize how slow until I timed it. It took 1 min 37 sec to reboot on my new PC. It took 45 seconds to reboot my old PC:

Athlon XP 2800+
1GB PC 2700
Asus A7V8 motherboard

I have way more programs and stuff on my old one too.

Why in heck would it take my new PC more than twice as long to reboot?

It spends most of the time on the Windows Loading screen (the one with the blue bars scrolling by). On my old one it's on that screen for about 15 seconds when on my new one it's there like over a minute.

On a side note, the new one is noticibly faster in loading times. When loading up games, it loads them in 50-75% of the time (even though they both have 1GB). Also my 3Dmark 06 score was 4371 (CPU Score- 1683), which seems about right to me. I just ran a virus scan just in case and it came up completely clean.

I tried the MS dual core hotfix and the AMD optimizer and it didn't change the startup time.

 

[Rob Williams]

I wouldn't consider that a real slow boot time to be honest. Newer hardware doesn't really mean a faster boot. The boot process doesn't seem to really get any faster.

Did your old PC use an IDE hard drive? Do you now use a S-ATA? If so, that's probably the difference, because I ran into the same issue a while back. No clue why, but that's how it was.

 

[Overkill0001]

Ah, yes, my old one was IDE.

Only thing is a lot of the reviews on newegg people said things like "loads windows twice as fast as my IDE drive".

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16822152020

I usually don't just go by newegg reviews but many people said the same thing.

Meh, I guess it doesn't matter. Booting is the only thing my new pc is slow at.

Somebody did say that brand new hard drives boot slower and after you reformat once it's faster, I'm not sure how much I believe that. It's probably not worth reformatting just because it might make it boot faster.

 

[Rob Williams]

I am not sure what the problem is really, because people tell me that their S-ATA drives boot Windows 'ultra-fast' also, but it's never worked that way for me, on three different computers.

 

[Overkill0001]

I just realized something it could be. I didn't install any jumpers on the HDD when I installed it. It is recognized as the Master Drive in BIOS. I got the Drive OEM, it didn't come with any instructions or even any jumpers. Would I have to install any jumpers if this is my only Hard Drive?

 

[Rob Williams]

Naw, not at all. It depends where you plug it in on your PC. If you plugged it in S-ATA1, then it would be primary master.

 

[leecho7]

I used to have the same problem when I got my DFI board. If you can, try to switch the boot priorities in BIOS. I was getting about 40 second boot times, now I get about 7 seconds boot time.
I can't remember what my boot priority settings are right now, will post later on what they are. However, I think it'll probably be different with different mobos.
Anyways, try changing your boot priorities and see if you get results.

 

[moon111]

Have you looked at what's loading up during startup?

Start > Run > type MSCONFIG > click OKAY >

Click on the STARTUP tab
What's here? There's 1000 of items you don't need to run usually.
If you don't know what the items are or if they're really needed to
load up or not... check out: http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php
Uncheck the items not needed.
***You're on your own with this... turning off your anti-virus, etc
by mistake etc can cause you a world of grief that nobody
here will take resposibility for***

In some cases you might also want to:

Click on the SERVICES tab > check 'Hide all Microsoft Services'
What's here? I've seen some AOL stuff etc loading that wasn't required.

On the topic of services, there use to be a website called blackviper.com
which would list some of the Windows services and you could turn off some
of them as well. The blackviper.com site went down, but a copy of it can be found at: http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12
***Warning: Turning off services can really make a mess... once again
you're on your own***