Issue with slow startup during BIOS setup on MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk motherboard.
Issue with slow startup during BIOS setup on MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk motherboard.
Hello there! I have some sad issue here. Here's my rig: Mobo: MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X RAM: Crucial Ballistic 4x8GB 2666MHz GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Gaming X PSU: Thermaltake Smart SE 530W OS Drive: NVME Samsung 960 EVO Here's the deal - around year ago I've replaced CPU, Mobo and RAM. The OS Drive, PSU and GPU worked well on my previous RIG (i5 4690K and MSI Z97 GAMING 3) - time from pushing power to boot was somewhere near 7s I guess. Now, this time is 36 seconds. There are two phases, first is before seeing MSI splash screen and loading circle, second is time from loading circle to appear and OS start (PIN screen). The first one is around 22 seconds, the second one is around 12-14 seconds. I've narrowed down the second time - when I unplug my old HDD, this goes down to only 7 seconds, which is acceptable. However, there is still the first part. My mobo has some fancy leds to identify the problems, and there I have CPU led which hangs for around 10 seconds and GPU led which hangs for another 10-15 seconds. RAM led just blinks and goes straight to the GPU. I have the newest BIOS available. Someone on reddit wrote that he has exactly same mobo and cpu and for him the time from push to pin is 6-7 seconds. I don't have any problems in Windows, I don't even remember if I had any blue screen in the past. So, I'm looking for a way to reduce that first time down. I believe it is called POST time (until BIOS 'kicks in') but I'm not sure Thanks for every advice!
You replaced the hardware and wondered if Windows reinstallation caused the issue.
These are my recent tests: I reset the CMOS, disconnected SSD and HDD (only M.2 remained), adjusted boot order, installed Ubuntu from an USB drive and got: 16.02. The MSI splash screen appears briefly with "press del for bios" only for a short moment, no white loading ring. It launches Ubuntu almost immediately. I repeated the process with M.2, which took about 21 seconds. Then I tried M.2 without the GPU: still around 21 seconds. After resetting CMOS, inserting the first RAM pair and testing M.2, it took about 21 seconds again. Swapping the first pair with the second and then back to both pairs took roughly 21 seconds. Resetting HDD and SSD brought everything back to around 33 seconds. I’m measuring time for the Windows welcome message since I can’t test without a GPU. Usually, the 12-second delay with both drives connected is fine for me; I only change the old HDD to get better results, probably. So my remaining issues seem to be with the motherboard or CPU. Am I mistaken? I don’t have a way to verify that either.
Boot duration refers to how long it takes to start the operating system... This is why I considered reinstalling Windows. If you didn’t reinstall, there might have been outdated drivers or other factors slowing down the initial startup. What you’re really facing is a slow POST process. Check your BIOS/UEFI for a fast boot option and another setting to bypass legacy device checks. Keep in mind that enabling fast boot will prevent you from accessing BIOS/UEFI settings, so you’d need to reset the CMOS and re-enter BIOS configurations afterward. My suggestion is to learn how to preserve your BIOS settings before making any changes. If this doesn’t resolve the prolonged startup, consider setting RAM to default values and see if that helps, as it might be attempting to load RAM settings at boot and failing, requiring a full restart. Since you can’t clearly see the issue, long POST times suggest this possibility.