POST Takes a While (15 seconds ish)

Darren

Darren

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Staff member
Hey all. I've noticed that my computer is taking an unusually long time to post. Probably in the neighborhood of about 15 seconds or so. I'm talking about from when I push the power button and when it does a post beep. Windows boots about as fast I post.

Any ways I can fix this? I know I'm not really going off of much. My boot order is set to where it's my SSD first, so I know it's not going through a long list of boot devices before that. This just seems to have gradually gotten worse. When I first got this board it would post within a few seconds. Ideas?

Thanks as always.
 
I've been noticing it in the past few months. I haven't really been keeping a close eye on it really since I generally push the power button, leave my room, and come back in about a minute or so. I know it wasn't like this to begin with but I couldn't nail a specific time when it started either. Sorry if that's not much help. I really started noticing it when I got my SSD as I was looking at boot speed increase. Since it takes longer to POST than it does to boot now, I was wondering what I could do to fix it.
 
If you think its ssd involved then unplug data and power cables and try booting to see how long it takes to post. Do you have the latest bios revision?
 
I don't think it has anything to do with the SSD. I'll try flashing to the latest revision.
 
You would be surprised what a bad piece of hardware can do to a system. I've seen a standard hdd that will stop a pc from booting up.
 
Upgrade your SSD firmware, if that doesn't work maybe try resetting the BIOS/CMOS. Do you have a 'fast boot' option in your BIOS and have you got it enabled?
 
I'm saying it's not the SSD because this was going on before I got the SSD. I just noticed the issue more since now I spend half of my boot time waiting to post. Before it was like 10-15 second post followed by a 60 second boot.

Now it's 10-15 seconds for boot and post each.

I'll check the fast boot option. I'm not at home so can't look for it right now.
 
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Flashed to newest BIOS and it seems a bit faster, in the neighborhood of about 10 seconds.

Turned on MSI Fast Boot option but I don't think it did anything.
 
Try disconnecting your SSD and booting like John suggested. Is it any faster?

It could well be the cause. A piece of hardware is slowing your POST down is what I think is going on here.
 
Yes, I know, but have you noticed it has gotten slower since the SSD had been installed?

I know you did a CPU upgrade too, did that make the POST any slower? I know you got your SSD and your new CPU at the same time, so I assuming this was happening before you upgraded the CPU?

Were you able to go into the BIOS and disable onboard stuff which you weren't using?
 
I looked for that option but couldn't find anything. I don't think the post speed has changed since I upgraded my SSD and CPU. Honestly it's better now to where it's not bothering me anymore since the BIOS flash helped a bit.
 
I'm going to resurrect this because I'm still curious if there's anything I can do. My laptop with a 5400RPM drive boots faster than my desktop currently. Both have relatively fresh installs of Windows 10. The laptop has about 1.5 seconds of BIOS time followed by a 10-12 second OS bootup. My desktop has a 10.5 second BIOS time with a 4-6 second OS bootup.

I've just updated to the most recent BIOS (2.5 to 2.7) and it doesn't seem to change anything. I've got MSI FastBoot set to enabled and it helps slightly, but not like it should be. I have a good 5-10 seconds of blackness before I get a flash of my BIOS splash and almost immediately after that a few seconds of darkness and then my W10 lock screen. Compared to 7 it boots MUCH faster than it did as 7 was about 15-20 seconds on its own. Still, it seems ridiculous that I spend more time waiting on the BIOS than the OS itself. Especially given my laptop is quicker with a crappy 5400RPM drive.

Is there anything else I can try? Any settings in the BIOS to try? MSI 970A G45 is my motherboard and the rest of my specs are in my signature.
 
Are you using UEFI or Legacy? Do you have any other boot devices in order such as NIC, or does it just hang at the MSI splash screen?

With UEFI and Fast Boot (also there should be a 'Windows 8/8.1' option) it should look like this:
 
beers said:
Are you using UEFI or Legacy? Do you have any other boot devices in order such as NIC, or does it just hang at the MSI splash screen?

With UEFI and Fast Boot (also there should be a 'Windows 8/8.1' option) it should look like this:
Click to expand...

Holy crap that's amazing. So removing every boot device possible? I didn't think that would be necessary since I would think it would just stop once it found one that worked. Also when I tried enabling the Windows 8 option a while back it completely screwed everything up until I just pulled my CMOS battery. I couldn't even get into the BIOS. I'll give those both a whirl. I think I'm in UEFI but need to check.

I like how you have a relevant video of this just on hand with an MSI board. My splash screen has a bunch of junk about Military Class and stuff like that, never seen the plain MSI logo before. I want to chuck this board out the window sometimes (everyday), but can't rationalize spending money on an AM3+ board now. Crappy power management makes it wet the bed when I turn up the 8320 too much in Prime95. I also had a lot of issues with RAM assignment until an update.
 
Well. I disabled everything I don't need, boot devices and anything else onboard that I can disable. No change.

Turning on and off MSI FastBoot, made a difference of about a second and a half. I've already had it on though. Tried just the normal "Fast Boot" option and it immediately started beeping at me in anger and came up with this.

11870912_10200736398087734_8773781394093126361_n.jpg


Trying Windows 8 feature with or without Fast Boot enabled would leave me with this.

11899797_10200736397967731_7703780724384666492_n.jpg


And consequently Windows 8 feature + with MSI FastBoot gives me this

11935060_10200736397847728_3322112068985131312_n.jpg


To make it even more fun the MSI FastBoot turns off my USB devices until it's booted into the OS, making it impossible for me to get to the BIOS. Time to pull out the battery. Looks like I just have a shitty motherboard.

Guess where my CMOS is? Under my massive graphics card. Whoever designed this board needs to be removed from any position of power.
 
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Some boards just have a long post time compared to others. My gigabyte board only has a post time of less than a couple seconds before windows 7 loads. While one of my other systems has a post time of over 5 seconds or more. But to be honest, I've never really liked MSI boards.
 
It probably has more to do with it being an 80 dollar motherboard 4 years ago. This is the one component I've ever purchased that's consistently had issues. I did make sure to not suggest my friends their boards for an AM3+ setup.

Got it all back and running again. I guess I'll just leave MSI FastBoot on and call it a day. Also the fact that there is an "MSI FastBoot" and just "Fast Boot" is stupid. They accomplish largely the same thing it appears, but one of them doesn't wreck your machine. I'm guessing that's why they added the MSI version later as it came as a program that created the entry in my BIOS.
 
My old GA-790FXTA-UD5 board took forever to post. Mostly because it had to initialize all the SATA ports, detect the drive, and then it also initialized my Apricorn PCI-e SATA card that held my SSD. Total boot time for Windows 8 with my old system was probably a minute.

My new motherboard POSTS in about 5 seconds. Total boot time is 10 seconds or so.
 
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