[SOLVED] Pre-BIOS takes for ever but after takes approximately 5 seconds

[Jezza1222]

Hello everyone,

{Edited to add information gathered}

I have recently found that my laptop (Lenovo Z50) has begun taking up to 30 minutes to reach the boot (the time between pressing the power button and seeing something other than a black screen).
During this pre-boot state:

• the power LED is on but there is nothing on the screen.
• Pressing the NUMLock key or CapsLock key does not toggle the corresponding LED.
• Removing the charging cable is the only thing which does create a response (a high pitched beep which I enabled in BIOS for this purpose)

The boot itself then takes approximately 5 seconds and from there it works flawlessly. I cannot think of exactly when this started, nor what might have caused it.

So far I have:

• Ensured BIOS is updated
• Updated all other drivers
• Replaced the hard drive with an SSD (this improved the BIOS boot time, but the pre-boot still takes a very long time)
• Checked the BIOS clock and found that it is correct
• Attempted a repair with DISM and SFC (which revealed no issues)
• Using the SEATools program, ran a Short DST and Long Generic Test (which revealed no issues)
• Ran MEMTest86 (which revealed no issues)
  • When running the MEMTest 86 from USB stick, the 30 minute wait did persist before it started to boot.

Has anyone come across something like this before?
How did you get around it?

Thank you in advance 😊

 

[Jezza1222]

Do you have another drive to test with? Backup your data, take out that system drive and put in the temporary drive. Install windows and see if the issue replicates:
If it doesn't then you know the issue resides with the wndows installation.
If it does, we know to troubleshoot the bios further.

Hi there, I thank you for your response and apologies mine was so slow.

I've put in a different hard drive and the slow pre boot remains.

 

[SgtScream]

My post before this one:
If you power off the laptop, unplug and take the laptop battery out of the laptop (hold down the power button with the battery out for 10 seconds), then plug in the ac adapter (Leaving the battery out). Does this affect the boot times?

 

[Jezza1222]

My post before this one:
If you power off the laptop, unplug and take the laptop battery out of the laptop (hold down the power button with the battery out for 10 seconds), then plug in the ac adapter (Leaving the battery out). Does this affect the boot times?

Tried that one this morning, and unfortunately gave no visible effect.

 

[Colif]

it seems you cannot disable UEFI boot on that laptop so that shoots 1 theory I had down, that the BIOS was looking for another drive at startup - https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo...-t-disable-UEFI-on-Lenovo-z50-70/td-p/3808317

I doubt booting onto a Ubuntu LIve usb would prove anything. Since its pre boot its unlikely to be software. And you say it runs fine once windows loads.