Slow windows 11 boot time

I have recently installed a WD Black 2tb NVME SDD as my boot drive, and installed a fresh version of Windows 11 Pro. I have 2 other internal drives being a Crucial 256gb SSD and a WD conventional 2tb HDD. I also have 2 external WD HDD's.

Switching my boot drive from SDD to NVME I thought the system might boot faster, but this does not seem to be the case. In Task Manager it tells me that BIOS time is 36.3 seconds. I am not sure if that is good or not, but suspect it is on the slow time.

I am not having any problems with my PC once it has booted but would appreciate any advice on boot time, and whether it can be speeded up.

I have Fast Boot enabled, and my BIOS is set to AHCI rather than RST.

Thank you.

Here's how to fix slow boot startup time on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Thank you freebooter. Most of these fixes I had tried without success. I had not tried a clean boot, but technically that made a marginal difference on boot time from 36.3 secs to 36.2 secs, although I suspect boot times change slightly every time anyway. I think I will leave it as is, because once booted applications load and run very quickly. As mentioned in question my boot drive is already a nvme ssd which is running at pcie gen 3 speeds.

angiemike6 said:

Thank you freebooter. Most of these fixes I had tried without success. I had not tried a clean boot, but technically that made a marginal difference on boot time from 36.3 secs to 36.2 secs, although I suspect boot times change slightly every time anyway. I think I will leave it as is, because once booted applications load and run very quickly. As mentioned in question my boot drive is already a nvme ssd which is running at pcie gen 3 speeds.

Click to expand...

I suggest you manage your startup programs using Autoruns utility. In this video, i will show you how to use a powerful application like Autoruns to manage your Windows start up programs, processes and other entries.

I have Asus motherboards.

I don't recall what the precise boot time is on my primary system, but I doubt that it's much less than 40 seconds. Maybe 35.

Most of that seems to be consumed by the startup diagnostics the board runs, before it even begins to load Windows (from a Gen4 NVME drive). There's a sequence of diagnostic LEDs (red for CPU, amber for RAM, white for GPU, yellow-green for boot device).

I humbly suggest that trying to reduce that will be a waste of time.

angiemike6 said:

Thank you freebooter. Most of these fixes I had tried without success. I had not tried a clean boot, but technically that made a marginal difference on boot time from 36.3 secs to 36.2 secs, although I suspect boot times change slightly every time anyway. I think I will leave it as is, because once booted applications load and run very quickly. As mentioned in question my boot drive is already a nvme ssd which is running at pcie gen 3 speeds.

Click to expand...

Here's something from TomsHardware. This is a 2018 article but still applies. Here’s How We Booted Windows 10 in 4.9 Seconds Keep in mind that Windows 11 has a fancy GUI, "With the hardware restriction that is so easily bypassed" but the core OS is Still Windows 10. This could prove advantageous or you could have tried it already. Take a look! Who knows... You may beet 4.9 Seconds

If I'm not mistaken, The BIOS boot time has nothing to do with the Windows boot time. If you haven't done it yet, check in your BIOS to make sure your boot drive is the first drive the BIOS looks for. The BIOS will look for a boot drive in the order you have selected until it finds a boot drive. This will slow your BIOS boot time.

Winuser said:

If I'm not mistaken, The BIOS boot time has nothing to do with the Windows boot time. (snip)

Click to expand...

I have no idea what you mean.

POST (power on self test) takes time. That's OS independent.

Winuser said:

Check in your BIOS to make sure your boot drive is the first drive the BIOS looks for.

Click to expand...

Yes, this could reduce your boot time to seconds. The OP is trying to beat 36.3 Seconds. My post #6 could reduce it to 4.9. I may try it tomorrow.

I just registered to tell you that I have the same issue. New pc build, fresh 22H2 Win 11 installation, boot time is around 25 seconds for no reason.



My other pc running windows 10 boots in less than 10 seconds on a i7 4770 processor with half the ram and 7 y old SSD

Thank you for all your responses. Like Bobkn I have an Asus motherboard. As my PC is quite speedy when up from boot, I will not worry now about the time it takes to boot. However Winuser's comments have opened another can of worms.

Previously I was running Windows 11 Pro on a 256gb SATA SSD, which was an upgrade from Windows 10 that had been installed by my local computer shop. I did not make any changes to BIOS in upgrading to Windows 11 Pro.

Recently I replaced my SATA SSD with a Pcie gen 3 NVME SSD, and installed Windows 11 Pro afresh from a USB key. The only change I made to BIOS was to change from RST to AHCI. So I assume all the other settings remained unaltered.

Following Winuser's comments I checked the boot section of my BIOS. I have an Asus motherboard with a UEFI Bios. The BIOS is set up to boot from Boot Manager with only the new NVME SSD showing. However when I checked the Secure Boot settings the OS Type was set to 'Other OS' rather than 'Windows UEFI mode'. The secure boot state is showing as enabled.

I changed the setting to 'Windows UEFI mode' and despite comments I have found on the internet my PC booted into Windows 11 without problem. So it doesn't seem to matter whether this setting is on 'Other OS' or 'Windows UEFI mode'. Comments on the internet suggest that using UEFI mode makes boot up quicker, but for me it made it slower. In 'Other OS' mode boot takes about 36 seconds, and in 'Windows UEFI mode' it averages 47 seconds. Internet comments suggested that if I installed Windows on 'Other OS' which I assume means legacy mode, it would not boot to windows if it were on 'Windows UEFI mode', but mine will boot on either setting.

Your further thoughts would be appreciated, especially advice as to whether this secure boot setting should be on 'Other OS', or 'Windows UEFI mode'. I am not clear what the differences between these two modes are.

Thank you.