GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 takes forever to boot?

[Z1NONLY]

I upgraded the MB in this system:

ECS MCP61M-M3 (V7.1) (Cheap AM3 micro ATX with a max TDP of 95w)
Phenom X6 1045t @2.7Ghz stock clock
8GB Patriot "sector 5" ram running at 1066 with 7 CAS timings.
OCZ vertex II 60GB SSD
500GB WD 7200 RPM HDD.
Galaxy GTX 560 (not a Ti)
Corsair TX750
Windows 7 64-bit

To a GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3


And it works great...once it finally boots.

I was able to get my my 1045t up to 3.3 Ghz without messing with voltages. Ran prime95 for about 20 min with no errors and core temps never got up to 50c.

Cinebench 11.5 score rose from 4.8-ish to 5.7.

The thing performs great, but I don't think it's worth the wayyyyyy long boot time. It doesn't matter if I'm running OC or default settings, this board taks as long or longer to boot than my 8yo rig used to.

My cheap ECS board went from power button to ready to use in something like 15 seconds. I thought it was all because of the SSD, but the new board is using the same ssd and stares at me with a blinking cusor in the top left for30-ish seconds, the Windows text comes out while the fireflies take another 30 or more seconds to get over their stage fright.

The screen that identifies what equipment the board sees is about as fast as the cheap board, but everything else takes forever. Out of the box was slow boot. It was slow after loading the drivers. It was slow after oc. And it's slow with "Failsaife" and "OPtimized defaults".


Is this a symptom of the backward-campatability of using an AM3+ with a phenom II or might I be doing something wrong?

 

[gabxan]

MAYBE PRBLM WITH THE HDD
or
what kinda did already installed @ your system maybe less is better
usualy is a driver seeking something or a dll...
that only experience what i am saying...
try to install windows again ...does it do samewise?
change the ram ---or dont overclock them check it out
Greez
Gab

 

[Wisecracker]

Verify that your backup BIOS is the same as your main BIOS

 

[Z1NONLY]

Verify that your backup BIOS is the same as your main BIOS

Sorry to be such a noob, but how do I do that?

 

[Z1NONLY]

MAYBE PRBLM WITH THE HDD
or
what kinda did already installed @ your system maybe less is better
usualy is a driver seeking something or a dll...
that only experience what i am saying...
try to install windows again ...does it do samewise?
change the ram ---or dont overclock them check it out
Greez
Gab

I'll start by connecting only the ssd with the OS and see how that does. (When I get home)

If I'm lucky. It will be fast with everything but one component and then I can investigate further.

If it's slow with just the SSD, I'm not sure where I'll go from there. (Reinstalling windows is a last resort I guess.)


It sems that this slow boot thing is not normal for this board. So that's good.

 

[Wisecracker]

Sorry to be such a noob, but how do I do that?

Well ...

You could read your manual, or click on the above link I gave you

And to really help you we probably need an explanation as to how you installed Windows, any third-party drivers, and setup your SSD & HDD.

 

[Z1NONLY]

Well ...

You could read your manual, or click on the above link I gave you

And to really help you we probably need an explanation as to how you installed Windows, any third-party drivers, and setup your SSD & HDD.

Didn't realize your sentence was also a link?

I'll check.

I guess the way windows was installed could be a problem but I transported my old HDD with XP on it before I upgraded to windows 7 and the SSD.

Neither XP nor 7 dragged like this with the cheap MB.

XP on the HDD took longer than 7 on the SSD, but no where near as long as with this MB.

I think disconnecting everything other than the SSD/OS will be a good starting point to isolate what's slowing it down.

 

[Wisecracker]

There are guys with much more knowledge than I, but I think your installation process 'gotcha'

My understanding is, a method exists (or at least, used to exist before Win7) that allows you to do a clean install with an upgrade CD -- within the process you must verify with a legit XP CoA.

Within the process (prior to the actual OS installation) you must also install the latest ahcix64s.inf driver and set up AHCI in your BIOS.

You should update to the latest BIOS (both main and backup!) to increase stability prior to a clean OS install.

I would also suggest having a Mod move this thread into the operating system area so the really smart guys can help you --- just respond in this thread with such a request and be patient.

They will hook you up. I'll try to keep an eye out for it

 

[Z1NONLY]

Did some troubleshooting and traced the problem to an external hard drive. When connected, the MB would "hang up" for a long time, then start windows and windows would do the same thing before proceeding.

Disconnecting the external hard drive resulted in a boot time that was almost as fast as the ecs board.

I have since reinstalled the cheap board just to verify it was a mismatch rather than a failure in the external hard drive itself.

Cheap MB boots right up and doesn't care if the drive is connected or not.

Thanks for all the recommendations.

 

[Z1NONLY]

Best answer selected by Z1NONLY.

 

[nikorr]

This topic has been closed by Nikorr