Fast boot on Windows 8 Pro

[EndijsG]

Hello!

 

My PC is booting up in about 20s - 30s, but in ASUS website there is a video, where they boot up in about 6s, so what can I do to boot so fast? I have I guess the same spec!

 

CPU: QuadCore Intel Core i7-3770K
RAM: kingston hyperx beast 2x 4gb 1866mhz
SSD: ADATA SP900 (SATA-III) 256 GB
MB: Asus Sabertooth Z77
Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 896 Mb
PSU:CHIEFTEC 750w

 

and a Windows 8 OS!

 

in UEFI bios I have fast boot enabled and bios is up to date. Windows is booting up in about 20s anyway!

Is it because of my super old graphic card?

 

 

 

[Volbet]

Did you set the SATA controller to AHCI mode?

[Overl0rd]

Is it because of my super old graphic card?

I don't think so. Shouldn't make any difference as far as I know.

[Dr3nz4r]

Having similar issues.. my pc boots up in 16 seconds but i ahve to say, that i do use SATA II for my SSD, because my MoBo doesnt have SATA III :(

 

Still any tweaks i could do to fastern up boot times? i got like 2 programs in autorun.. not even antivirus

[EndijsG]

Did you set the SATA controller to AHCI mode?

Yes, it is enabled to AHCI, but I don't know if it was before installing OS as I found out it need to be set to AHCI before installing OS

[Volbet]

Yes, it is enabled to AHCI, but I don't know if it was before installing OS as I found out it need to be set to AHCI before installing OS

If you are in doubt about AHCI mode follow this guide to be sure you have enabled it. Also have you plugged you SSD into the right SATA port? You don't want to plug it into a SATA 2 port or a third-party SATA 3 port.

[Wats]

is it the bios that takes for ever or the actual windows boot?

 

i remember a guide to reducing bios load? time around here. theres more you can do besides just manually changing the splash screen time to 0 seconds

[N7_Zer0]

Mine boots in about 15sec after pressing the power button. Windows loads quick, it's the POST that takes the longest.

 

Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe

i5-3570K

8GB RAM

Crucial M4 128GB

 

[EndijsG]

[EndijsG]

If you are in doubt about AHCI mode follow this guide to be sure you have enabled it. Also have you plugged you SSD into the right SATA port? You don't want to plug it into a SATA 2 port or a third-party SATA 3 port.

SATA 6Gb/s port, brown on my Asus Sabertooth Z77 board

[EndijsG]

If you are in doubt about AHCI mode follow this guide to be sure you have enabled it.

I followed this guide and it try to repair my PC, but it didn't finish and after restart it started to repair again so I needed to restore from 2013.07.30 to be able to start OS! :(

Maybe I will reinstall OS someday.

[Flynn]

I'm the same way, windows 8 boots in about 6 seconds, but post takes about 10 seconds.  Usually if I reboot, from the time it takes to shutdown and completely bring Win8 back up again, takes about 25 seconds.

 

A buddy didn't believe me that it's all Win8 (of course I also have it an a SSD).  But I dual booted Win8 and Win7 on the same computer, took Win8 19 seconds to boot up, took Win7 67 seconds to boot up.  Pretty crazy difference.

 

My work computer is even worse though, it's funny because I will come in on Monday after playing on my computer all weekend and bang my head on the desk because it takes two and a half minutes to boot the computer, not to mention get Outlook running and getting everything set up for my day.  Then to use the damn thing is even worse.  I'm spoiled by my home computer lol.

[Lays]

I boot from off to windows in 17 sec I believe on win 7, idk if thats about average/fast/slow

 

OT: if your post takes long I think there's a setting in ur mobo settings where you can change the duration of it.

[Anubikai]

Enable hybrid shutdown in the power menu....it might work with 8gb of ram...i have 16gb and my comp boots in like less than 10s without a ssd....

 

 

-Anubikai

[GoodBytes]

Sorry guys, but this is not how you get fast boot.

 

To get Fast boot and have Windows boot in ~6sec. You need the following setup:

 -> A motherboard with FULL UEFI support (having the option in the BIOS/UEFI setup is not enough)

 -> Enable UEFI (if ti's was disabled, you'll need to re-install Windows)

 -> Turn OFF CSM in the UEFI setup.

 -> Set your HDD/SSD OS partition to GPT and not MBR format. (GPT is only bootable on UEFI ready system)

 -> Finally, you need a GOP ready graphic card. GOP ready graphic card allows the graphic card to boot itself and be ready with the system virtually instantly. You know when you press the power button, and you have wait for several seconds before the monitor detects a signal? Well that's the GPU booting up, and the BIOS detecting it after. A GOP ready graphic card, will allow the GPU to be ready faster, and allow to send its specs to the BIOS instead of being scanned, allowing things to be ready in no time.

 -> Windows 8 or any fully UEFI ready OS.

 -> Having the SATA controller to AHCI mode is not a requirement, but helps get that ~6sec mark.

 

To get a GOP ready graphic card, you need to get to the manufacture web site of the graphic card (ASUS, Gigabyte, EVGA), and download the latest UEFI ready firmware.

 

Note the following:

 -> Not every GPU made by every manufacture can have this. What I mean, is that if you have a GeForce 670 from XYZ company, XYZ might have used a non-upgradable firmware chip, OR a firmware chip too small to support a GOP ready firmware. While the same card from ABC might. So you have to check and not assume.

 

 -> GOP ready graphic card CANNOT be bootable on BIOS system. Meaning that once you update the firmware, the graphic card will be a brick in a old BIOS system. They are exception, some manufacture for SOME graphic card, have a firmware chip big enough (or 2 of them) to support a hybrid solution. This is model specific.

 

 -> Once the firmware updated, there is no going back to non GOP ready firmware.

 

 -> If in your UEFI options, you don't have "CSM" option available to enable or disable, then forget everything. As it's an indicator that the motherboard doesn't fully support UEFI. CSM is an option to support non-GOP ready graphic card, when ENABLED (CSM stands for: Compatibility Support Module, hence why you want it disabled). So if it's not there, it means that CSM is always on, or doesn't even use anything related to it, as it doesn't fully support UEFI. There was a period where motherboard manufacture used UEFI just for allowing support of booting on a 3TB partition on an HDD, and/or getting a nice looking interface, and not actually the support the whole thing.

 

 

Why UEFI makes the computer boot faster?

In a nut shell, the reason why the BIOS takes so long to boot, is because, it scans and detect every hardware one-by-one in your system, and which ever hardware, whether be on your motherboard like an added SATA controller, or firewire, or USB, etc, or a PCI/PCI-E card, that takes time to boot, it will wait for it, and not do anything else until it's ready. Once ready, it resume it's task of detecting other hardware, and setting things up.

 

Once everything is done, it start the OS. Now, your OS starts, and goes "Well I know nothing about your computer, so let me scan all your hardware". And does what it says. It will rescan your hardware, despite the BIOS done the task already. The problem is that OS and BIOS can't communicate between each other.

 

With UEFI, hardware gives to the UEFI system it's information and it doesn't need to scan the hardware, and it can give that information while the hardware itself boots. Moreover, the UEFI can multi-task, and execute the entire boot process at the same time, including, for hardware that it must detect/scan, will do several at the same time. Once all done, it will boot the OS, and then SEND all the information about your system it gathered, to the OS, so that the OS can start MUCH faster, as it only needs to load itself, and the drivers. That is why you need a fully supported UEFI OS, such as Windows 8.

 

Now it must be noted, that I have not done this myself, because this is where I learned that my motherboard doesn't fully support UEFI. Lucky for me, I didn't update the firmware of my GPU yet, and ended up with a brick.

 

I hope this helps. I am pretty exited if someone takes the weekend to set it up (obviously it's a lot more convenient to setup before you have a system up and running), and here feedback.