[SOLVED] slow boot with Asrock B450m and an NVME drive ?

Oct 16, 2020
4
0
10
Hi everyone !

I've bought a B450M Steel Legend mother board and paired it with a 3700x from AMD but I can't get fast boot to work.

I've enabled the secure boot, Ultra Fast Boot (obviously) and my windows is set as an UEFI instal.

Still I get the bios message and the boot is just not fast at all. Especially with an NVMe drive. I'm talking more than 30 seconds long most of the time.

Could you please help me out ? :)

Thanks !
 
Solution
I only have the Nvme drive so no problem there. And I've been using it for some time now so I can't really do a reinstall of windows.
Then you're in the uncomfortable position of troubleshooting a Windows 10 installation. It can be long and complicated, but generally starts with un-installing anything (non-Windows) that has an icon in the notification area. Motherboard utilities and things like that are common areas to look at.

You might try some simple fixes; in a Command prompt with admin priv's run an SFC /SCANNOW command to see if there's any corruption of system files.

Right click on the NVME in This PC then pick properties / tools and OPTIMIZE it.

How big is the NVME? If extremely full it's like any other SSD and can...
The standard bios message on startup like what the CM is and the key to enter setup.

MB : Asrock B450M Steel Legend
CPU : AMD Ryzen 3700X
GPU : RTX 2070 Super
Ram : 16gig DDR4 12600mhz (I think. I dont remember precisely)

First thing to do is to do a CMOS reset...instructions should be in your manual...and operate with BIOS settings in full defaults to see if it helps speed up booting.

Did you do a fresh Windows install?

Are you certain you installed windows to the NVME? It can be confusing so if an HDD was in-system at same time during first turn-on and install it might get installed to that instead.

If the hardware is compatible it should run through POST fairly quickly (after a CMOS reset) and move to the Windows boot. If Windows startup is slow the spinning window will be what you see most of time. There are ways to troubleshoot slow Windows startup, but for a new computer a clean install of the OS to the NVME is best choice.

Once you've done that install only the AMD chipset drivers (get them from the AMD support site too). Let it run using the default Windows drivers for LAN and audio or anything else, including GPU for now. It's easy to break Windows by tweaking things, whether in BIOS or in Windows, before it's fully set up properly.

It should do a fairly quick restart now, but I'd let windows settle down before assessing it. Windows creates 'caches' and indexes for fast startup to work and that takes some time and several startups. Once you've determined a baseline startup, now start installing things (beginning with GPU drivers) and tweaking up BIOS settings. And keep track of startup times so you will know when you break it with something you installed or tweaked.
 
Last edited:
I'll do the CMOS reset and see what's up. It's a fresh install but I do have the long windows spinning...
Do the CMOS reset for sure...but if it's the spinning windows that's where the problem is most likely. If after the CMOS reset, and touching no BIOS settings, do a fresh install of Windows with only the NVME in the system...as above. Minimum driver install (only AMD Chipset drivers, from AMD support site) and let Windows settle down before proceeding to install GPU drivers, and then BIOS tweaks and other installs.

FWIW: avoid any motherboard applications that come from Asrock. Just a general rule of mine as I've no experience with what they provide but I've yet to find any that are worth the drain they put on system resources. And Windows provides such perfectly functional drivers for Audio and LAN I use them preferentially too. But to get proper functioning of AMD chipsets and Ryzen 3000 processors you have to install AMD's chipset drivers.
 
Last edited:
I only have the Nvme drive so no problem there. And I've been using it for some time now so I can't really do a reinstall of windows.
Then you're in the uncomfortable position of troubleshooting a Windows 10 installation. It can be long and complicated, but generally starts with un-installing anything (non-Windows) that has an icon in the notification area. Motherboard utilities and things like that are common areas to look at.

You might try some simple fixes; in a Command prompt with admin priv's run an SFC /SCANNOW command to see if there's any corruption of system files.

Right click on the NVME in This PC then pick properties / tools and OPTIMIZE it.

How big is the NVME? If extremely full it's like any other SSD and can slow down when spare capacity becomes limited. Keeping it OPTIMIZED can help with that but only increasing it's size...or moving things to another drive...can really help. Try to keep your system SSD at 75% capacity or less.

If you've disabled FAST STARTUP in Power Options / System Settings enable it.

You might enable and run some windows troubleshooters to see if that helps (type "troubleshoot" in Cortana).
 
Solution