How to get faster booting?

[unplanned bacon]

These are minor things, but my rig takes roughly 90 seconds to boot (40+ of them staring at a welcome screen). How can I make it go faster???
Is this just an inevitability of the boot drive being mechanical (it's virtually empty though)?

Also Xbox Music is giving me trouble, music is stopping, it's force ALT+Tabbing out of games and throwing up things like can't play this song and headphones not connected when they are and are working. Is there a way to sort this and is there another service like it (Windows 8 actually got this one right)?

 

[canadianvice]

just thought I might need an SSD tray!!! I'd thought about this earlier, but my case manual only mentions it for one mounting location which is a 3.5 inch slot I think, but not for the other where I plan to put it (which is an actual SSD mounting location)

Use the SSD mount location if you can. Worst case scenario, you can leave the SSD unmounted in your case if you can find a spot for it... it has no moving parts like an HDD, so as long as the connection is secure it's fine (for a tieover).

 

[unplanned bacon]

Right, there was an SSD tray included, but the bit of the case blocking access is missing one screw hole, because Zalman forgot to machine it in so once I remove that I can't put it back. They're also two holes short in the dedicated SSD mounting spot, but you can mount there, so it looks like I'll be using that spot and using molex for power

EDIT: Just over an hour after starting, SSD is in (after complications of holes not being machined where they should be and deciding how to power the drive), Windows is installing, Black has been formatted, one air filter has been cleaned. Actual install, only took about 10 to 15 minutes. Just need to format Green and get rid of that unallocated space partition and reinstall all my stuff. Hope this install doesn't go as badly as the very first one I did three months ago

 

[unplanned bacon]

:O 😀 This thing is SO quiet and SO QUIET! Boot times are like 3 seconds now! Just getting all my drivers loaded on. How do I get rid of the unallocated space on my tertiary drive?

 

[unplanned bacon]

I should have gone SSD from the start 😀. Ting is so quick, it's now a challenge to get to the BIOS even with fast start disabled! Keemann would have gotten best solution, there was just more involvement from CanadianVince

 

[canadianvice]

:O 😀 This thing is SO quiet and SO QUIET! Boot times are like 3 seconds now! Just getting all my drivers loaded on. How do I get rid of the unallocated space on my tertiary drive?

I would just partition it into whatever you need.
My usual config of partitioning on the HDD is:
D:\\ (Users)
C:\\Program Files (HDD) -> Mount empty NTFS folder. This is where you put the programs that aren't boot programs.
G:\\Games
D:\\Downloads\Torrents -> Mount empty NTFS folder. This is for all of my torrents.

I wouldn't personally use the Windows Partition Manager much. I like EASUS Home Partition Master much more.

If BIOS entry is an issue, keep in mind you can usually do a manual adjustment on the clock.
Hold for... 30 seconds, etc.