Freshly imaged Win 7 Pro 64bit takes 4 minutes to boot

[cougar78]

Ok so, my computer runs pretty well except that anytime I have to reboot it, it takes 4 minutes to go from Bios splash screen to login. Over 3 and a half minutes sitting on the windows black screen with the logo.
Specs:
ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO AM3 AMD 785G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop CPU
16gig G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Eyefinity 6 Edition Video Card
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD4500HLHX 450GB 10000 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

I did a fresh image of just windows 7 pro 64bit and no USB drives connected and it is still taking over 3 minutes on the windows boot screen. After it is logged in, I have no lag or slowness.
I haven't checked if I have the most up to date bios but it is only one or two versions behind at the most. I don't recall having this issue when I first built this machine but since that time the video card, ram, and case have changed (Haf 932 case).
I haven't run diagnostics like memtest yet, I will run tonight (I spent several hours setting the machine back up after the fresh Windows install).

So outside of the diagnostics testing to validate there isn't anything wrong with the ram, processor, or motherboard, what other things would anyone suggest to troubleshoot this issue? Keep in mind that I've kept the msconfig startup programs very clean so I have excluded most of the individual programs from causing this delay. Again, first reboot after completion of Windows 7 Pro 64bit, it took 4 minutes and consistently still does. So any help is appreciated.

 

[Gunbuster]

Windows interrogates and loads storage drivers during that logo (among other things), my guess is it is waiting for a SATA channel status check to time out. Try disabling any unused ports in the BIOS.

 

[cougar78]

Typically, all my sata ports are used. For the test above I had disconnected the other 2 sata drives and left the other 2 sata ports active because one was for the dvd drive and the other was for esata port on the front of the case.

What I didn't add above is that my sata ports are set to IDE instead ACHI, could that be an issue? Also, I have 3 sata drives, 1 sata dvd drive, and like I said the front sata port connected to the 5th sata port on the motherboard.

So what you are recommending is that I disconnect the other devices and disable those sata ports to see if that is what is causing the issue?

 

[Shawn]

I usually use ACHI, but I don't think you can change it once windows is installed.

 

[cougar78]

well if need be I'm still at a point that it wouldn't be difficult to reimage (fresh win 7 install). I can say I've never changed that setting so I'm doubtful that would be the issue but I figured best to include that in case there was a chance it could cause an issue.

 

[corkyg]

There are basically two ways of "imaging" a drive. Backup/Restore and Clone. Which did you use?

 

[cougar78]

When I put in the new drive, it was a fresh install of Windows. If I were to do it again, it would again be a fresh install and I wouldn't be using a backup or cloning for this machine.

 

[Gunbuster]

Change Win 7 from IDE to ACHI mode: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

 

[cougar78]

Change Win 7 from IDE to ACHI mode: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

Ok... but will this have an affect on my issue or is it just best practice to do so?

 

[cougar78]

Thanks for the help. It seems like it was a USB external drive issue. Once I disconnected all of them and rebooted it took less than a minute.

I would like to know if I should change my Sata settings from IDE to ACHI or should I leave it as is?

 

[Gunbuster]

in general yes AHCI is better. Without it you don't get any features like command queuing or advanced power management.

 

[cougar78]

great, thanks. I will mess with it tonight to get that setting changed.