Slow boot (~13 sec BIOS-time) on brand new rig

[AlisAquilae]

I've recently buildt my own pc (and had a blast doing so), but I've found that it takes a terribly long time to boot. My old pc, which was 8 years old, booted faster than this one. After having tried a load of different things and ran a lot of checks, I decided to ask here. 

 

My PC is a Windows 11 64-bit system (clean install), which has the OS installed on an m.2 SSD (SeaGate FireCuda 530 2TB) and an MSI Z690-Edge WiFi motherboard. The PC doesn't have a lot of software installed, only the basics since it's brand new, and except for my anti-virus, Windows Defender and iCue for my lighting, all of it has been disabled on startup. I made sure fast-boot is enabled both in the control panel and in the BIOS. My BIOS also contains an MSI Fast Boot option, but after reading about it online this doesn't seem to have a lot of advantages when booting from an SSD. Both Windows, my BIOS and all other drivers on my PC are completely up-to-date. 

 

If you've got suggestions on how to increase my boot time, or on things I have not checked yet, please do comment. Any help is appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance!

[GuiltySpark_]

Lets start here since you seemed to have left this out, how long until you actually press the power button are you at the login screen/desktop? (That BIOS-time reading is irrelevant for now)

 

What is happening on the screen that seems to be taking a longer than usual amount of time?

[AlisAquilae]

19 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

Lets start here since you seemed to have left this out, how long until you actually press the power button are you at the login screen/desktop? (That BIOS-time reading is irrelevant for now)

 

What is happening on the screen that seems to be taking a longer than usual amount of time?

Using the stopwatch on my phone, from the moment I press the power button to the moment I see the desktop pop-up, it takes about 23 seconds. This time seems to be pretty evenly divided between POST and Windows booting, with the latter taking slightly longer. Compared to my previous PC, the POST and screen where you can enter the BIOS take a relatively long time. This used to be a second or so, where now it's around 8.

 

Edit: Another thing to note, which I now realise I didn't mention previously, is that there is this weird screen on start-up where only a _ is displayed and nothing else. This lasts for about 4 seconds and then things actually progress.

[NinJake]

37 minutes ago, AlisAquilae said:

Compared to my previous PC, the POST and screen where you can enter the BIOS take a relatively long time. This used to be a second or so, where now it's around 8.

There's normally an option in the BIOS to select how long you want the "startup delay".

 

37 minutes ago, AlisAquilae said:

Another thing to note, which I now realise I didn't mention previously, is that there is this weird screen on start-up where only a _ is displayed and nothing else.

This is normally when the system is accessing the boot loader/operating system on the appropriate disk.

[Lairlair]

23 seconds doesn't seem super long. My old system with a sata ssd just took 20 seconds to startup, and a newer one with an nvme ssd takes about the same time. I guess there's always a bit of wiggle room for the time it takes for every fan to be up to speed and different mobos to do their POST.

 

Maybe check that windows uses the hibernate feature, which is meant to dump some data on the drive to boot faster...?