Sloooooow boot 64bi Business

hi guys, i'm new around these parts. I'm having some irritating boot issues that i'm hoping someone here can shed some light on.

A rough timeline:

Turn on PC
18 seconds - bios screen flashes up for a split second (this hasn't always happened), follwed by "checking nv ram" followed by a screen that shows the two CD drives (why?)
- black-
34 seconds - vista loading bar
46 seconds - black
1.53 (!!!!!) - Windows icon appears
1.56 - login ready

On fresh install (week or so ago) it was fine, then there were 48 updates to install...since then it's been slow.

I've ensured HDD is first boot device, i've defragged the HDD, even tried RC1 of SP1, but that just seemed to make it crash so i've since uninstalled it - made no difference to my boot time.

Any ideas most welcome, it's a right pain!

System specs:

Q6600 (G0) 2.4GHz @ 2.7GHz - Tuniq Tower 120 - Asus P5K-E - 4GB Corsair XMS2 PC6400 CL4 - BFG 8800GT 512MB OC2 - Corsair TX750W PSU - 500GB Western Digital 16MB Cache - Antec P182 - Vista Business x64 - Microsoft Reclusa - Logitech G5 - Creative X-Fi Xtreme

thanks

There can be a number of issue on slow boot times, especially if the pc is new. You will find that there is alot of indexing going on as well as anti virus activity logging files incase they get changed. Even when you leave your computer at the boot up screen vista will chug away in the background.
Anyway to check what is going on look in your performance and error logs to see if there are any errors or something that jumps out at you. You can access this by going into computer management.
As regards to your computer showing twin cd drives you will have to go into your bios and look at the settings, this is normally the del key on post.
I leave my settings on auto, if your bios is corrupted then you can try to go back to factory default and reset your settings. Write down the current setting so they can be changed back manually.

Mine takes about 60 seconds from the time I hit the boot button to functional desktop. You might check out this web site to see what services you do not need to start automatically and what ones you do not need at all.

Black Viper's Web Site


On the left hand side under Features: you will see Windows Vista Services, click on it.

thanks guys, will give those suggestions a go when i'm less hungover

Also - You can click computer/system properties/Performance (at the bottom)/advanced tools. At the top, it'll tell you if there are programs causing windows to start slowly, and what they are. Then you can decide what to nuke, and what you need to just live with.

Right well I think i've got to the bottom of this - the problem was with my external HDD! I tried changing several settings in the BIOS regarding the drive but made no difference. If I disconnect it then the boot time is literally halved.

I also disabled on board sound, and firewire controller in the bios

Boot time is now under a minute, so that's acceptable. Still a delay before the bios logo appears, and that appears to be down to the keyboard!! But it's shorter now too..

Anyway I can live with a minute. Thanks