What might be responsible for the 4-minute boot time on your custom-built PC?
What might be responsible for the 4-minute boot time on your custom-built PC?
I’m struggling to understand why my PC takes such a long time to boot up. After installing Windows 10, everything worked quickly, but once I switched to Windows 11 the process has become extremely slow. At first it took about three minutes just for the desktop to load. Now it’s stuck at POST for four minutes before reaching Windows, and only after that do the desktop icons show up.
Here’s what I’ve tried:
- Ran several clean installations of Windows 11.
- Replaced the power supply unit with a new one.
- Switched to a different RTX 5070 Ti graphics card (the problem continued before and after).
- Checked my RAM, drivers, and updated everything on the GPU, CPU, and motherboard BIOS. Windows 11 was fully updated.
For reference, I recently built a server with an AMD platform that boots in seconds. This is different. Could the issue lie with the Intel i9 9900k, the motherboard, or perhaps something related to Windows 11? Maybe it’s a BIOS conflict, driver problem, or storage configuration? I’m not sure what’s causing this delay and would appreciate any advice or steps to help identify the cause.
PSU: [New model not specified]
Remove the side panels from the case and check the labeled components on the PSU to determine its brand and model. How recent is this?
We replaced the existing PSU with a new one.
What PSU did you use before?
Motherboard: ROG Maximus XI Hero WiFi
BIOS version: Current version
Cooling method: Multiple clean installs of Windows 11
Installer setup: Recreated the installer to exclude issues. Did you install the OS in offline mode, installing drivers manually at an elevated level during offline installation?
Storage: SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD 2TB NVMe M.2 PCIe
Did you use Samsung's Magician App to confirm the SSD firmware is up to date?
Even if the operating system remains unchanged, I recommend turning off XMP in the BIOS and bringing your RAM back to the original JEDEC speed, which is likely around 4,800MT/s. This should help avoid possible XMP "memory training" problems that can delay startup on DDR5 systems. In theory, once the memory is properly trained during the first power-up of a new build, boot times should improve significantly. However, some systems may need to retrain the memory each time the PC starts.
Check whether "Memory Context Restore" is active on your motherboard.
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/intel...90...d-p/896395
I've noticed that certain setups with many hard disks (spinning rust) often experience slower boot times into Windows, even when using M.2 NVMe drives. This might not be an issue for your configuration.
I apologize for the PSU confusion. I'm using a CORSAIR RM850x, and the previous PSU was a Seasonic FOCUS GX-650. The BIOS is updated to the latest version, 2004. I'm not sure what you mean by offline mode. I used the Titus installer to remove bloatware and manually installed necessary drivers. I also recently used Driver Booster to check for any outdated drivers. The NVMe firmware has been verified as up to date. As a side note, it took three Windows installations to achieve stability. The first two attempts resulted in stalls and crashes, but the current installation seems stable.
For some reason Bitlocker is enabled and requires me to use some code in order to access safe mode. At this time, safe mode can't be accessed and disabling or removing Bitlocker will take a day or two for the process.
There's an NVME, one SSD and two traditional. I also have a drobo connected with 4 traditional drives. As of writing this, I thought about unplugging the drobo to make sure that's not a culprit.
What do you mean bios time, you mean after boot up? I'll need a software to check on that.
I reduced my system's boot time by removing the Drobo device. The issue was resolved quickly, but it was concerning knowing my primary data storage relied on this hardware. Its reliability over two decades is impressive, yet its failure now affects performance. I’m trying to figure out how to adjust the Drobo settings to prevent slowdowns and explore better alternatives since it’s no longer available.
Task manager/startup appears in the upper right corner of the screen.
I would definitely say "ditch the Drobo"!
When they first launched, I really wanted to like them.
But soon, bad reviews and problems emerged. Their custom pseudoRAID was causing issues.
Does this Drobo hold the sole copy of all your data?
If yes, get it off immediately.