[SOLVED] Boot time suddenly taking >30s

[youwontlikeitsugar]

I have an ASUS Z87I-Pro Mini ITX, and for years there has never been anything wrong with it. However, within the last week the BIOS boot time has went from <3s to >30s.

There have been a few recent events that may be worth mentioning in case they have caused this problem;

1. I installed a new 500Gb SSD (existing hard drives were 1 x 500Gb SSD and 2 x 1Tb HDD)
2. I installed Linux Ubuntu on the new SSD
3. Installing GPU driver on Ubuntu caused errors which required multiple restarts, it was during these restarts that I noticed the long boot time (I did not notice the long boot time since the installation of the new SSD, but I didn't reboot much, this all happened within 2 days of SSD installation).

So far I have tried;

1. Checking fast boot is enabled (Windows and BIOS)
2. Uninstalling Ubuntu
3. Configured BIOS so that it only ran tests on boot drive
4. Removing the new SSD
5. Removing all hard drives except for the Windows boot drive
6. Reset all BIOS settings to default

Nothing seems to make a difference, and I am out of ideas. I think the BIOS must be trying to test the hard drives and timing out, or something similar. Or that I have created an invalid state by not shutting down Windows/Linux properly before booting the other. Does anyone have any advice on how to diagnose and/or fix this?

My last resort may be reinstalling Windows, but since this happens in the BIOS before Windows boots I am not convinced even this will help (Windows still boots very quickly btw).

Below is my hardware that ASUS technical support asked me to complete before they offered me absolutely no useful advice whatsoever.

[Product Information]
Product Type : Motherboard
Product Model : Z87I-PRO
Product S/N : D8M0AB385142
Operation System / Firmware or BIOS version : Windows 10, BIOS-0402

[Graphics Card Vendor/model/Chipset/Driver]
MSI GTX 760

[CPU vendor/processor number]
Intel i5-4670K

[Memory vendor/model/specification]
Crucial 2x8Gb DDR3

[Others]
Samsung 850 Evo SSD, Crucial MX500 SSD, 2 x WD Black

 

[cin19]

May try to run the "SFC", how to https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...em-files/bc609315-da1f-4775-812c-695b60477a93
Or
Try to fix your Windows PC’s master boot record (MBR), because like you said the Ubuntu may mess up the window OS.

 

[youwontlikeitsugar]

May try to run the "SFC", how to https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...em-files/bc609315-da1f-4775-812c-695b60477a93
Or
Try to fix your Windows PC’s master boot record (MBR), because like you said the Ubuntu may mess up the window OS.

It was the MBR. Fixed by;

1. booting from Windows 10 USB
2. Repair Windows
3. Troubleshooting
4. Command line

bcdedit /export c:\bcdbackup
c:
cd boot
attrib bcd -s -h -r
ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

Really the last line was what fixed it, the previous lines just back up the old BCD.

Thanks for the point to MBR, once I started down that track I found it.