Very long pause before bios post screen quandary

RubberDuck · Jun 2, 2022

I didn't want to edit my post just previous to this so my description of the problem isn't lost in the noise
A couple of additional things I've noticed about the boot process. The desktop has an accent light on the front. This light can be enabled/disabled in the bios. I have it disabled.

When the power is applied to the desktop, as previously noted, the accent light (being disabled) come on for 8 seconds. It then switches off at 8 seconds. That indicates to me the bios boot process is doing something during this pause.
I don't know what processes are happening during the initial phase before the post screen appears.

Ghot · Jun 2, 2022

@RubberDuck

OK I just shut my comp off... completely.

Then I turned it on via the case power switch.
It took 13 seconds to get to the BIOS splash screen, and 14 more seconds to get to the Lock Screen.
I have the POST Delay Time, set to 2 seconds in the BIOS, and I have Fast Boot (in the BIOS)... Disabled.
That's normal speed for me.
I have Windows installed on a 2.5" SSD

When I say BIOS splash screen, I mean this...
In the BIOS I can set this to show the ASUS logo instead.

RubberDuck · Jun 2, 2022

Ghot said:
@RubberDuck

OK I just shut my comp off... completely.

Then I turned it on via the case power switch.
It took 13 seconds to get to the BIOS splash screen, and 14 more seconds to get to the Lock Screen.
I have Windows installed on a 2.5" SSD

When I say BIOS splash screen, I mean this...

View attachment 30557

That indicates to me that what I'm seeing may be normal behavior. Even though mine may take twice as long I have a lot of stuff plugged into USB slots. Even though the time before the splash screen is unaffected with everything disconnected. I have not tried booting with the NVMe (OS) drive removed totally from the machine. I only tried it being disabled in the bios. It's a real killer to get to and remove. I DID physically remove the drive that had the secondary OS I was referring to as "clone". That didn't make a difference either.

RubberDuck · Jun 2, 2022

One other question GHOT. Is Karen's Replicator not redundant to the Macruim backup? Why do you use it in addition to Macrium?

Ghot · Jun 2, 2022

RubberDuck said:
One other question GHOT. Is Karen's Replicator not redundant to the Macruim backup? Why do you use it in addition to Macrium?

Yes... in a way. But I don't make Macrium backups of my storage drives, cause they are HUGE, and as you can see in the pics... the 4TB is almost full. I ONLY use Karens on the storage drives.
I ONLY use Macrium for my Windows backups.

As I said above... the 4TB is my working drive. That's where I save things and delete things, etc.
Then every 2-3 days, or weeks... I run Karens, just to copy the changes I might have made to the 4TB... onto the 8TB.

Do you have Fast Boot enabled or disabled, in your BIOS?

RubberDuck · Jun 2, 2022

Ghot said:
Yes... in a way. But I don't make Macrium backups of my storage drives, cause they are HUGE, and as you can see in the pics... the 4TB is almost full. I ONLY use Karens on the storage drives.
I ONLY use Macrium for my Windows backups.

As I said above... the 4TB is my working drive. That's where I save things and delete things, etc.
Then every 2-3 days I run Karens, just to copy the changes I might have made to the 4TB... onto the 8TB.

I see. That make total sense.

Ghot · Jun 2, 2022

RubberDuck said:
I see. That make total sense.

You CAN do it all with Macrium... but I like keeping Macrium.... simple.
Karen's is a LOT easier to set up "jobs" on, than Macrium or Acronis.

Btw... there's another program at Karen's called: Directory Printer.
It's awesome... it'll print out whatever is in whatever folder you point it at.

Like if you wanted to print out a list of all your... music... or pictures... etc.

Like so...

almodovaris · Jun 2, 2022

Also, Macrium is MUCH easier to set up than Acronis. Plus, the Macrium backup full backup took about 15 minutes compared to over an hour for Acronis.

You're not doing it right. Don't boot from Acronis Linux environment, boot from Windows Strelec. That way it is much faster. It backups or restores the NVMe disk of a Surface Laptop in less than 10 minutes, on an external USB enclosure for a NVMe disk.

Ghot · Jun 2, 2022

@RubberDuck

Do you have Fast Boot, enabled in your BIOS?
With Fast Boot enabled... it skips a lot of the POST test during boot. It'll speed things up.

/edit

If you decide to remove Acronis... don't just try to uninstall it.
Use the Acronis removal tool.

Acronis Cleanup Utility | Knowledge Base

How to uninstall and cleanup machine from Acronis backup software

kb.acronis.com

RubberDuck · Jun 2, 2022

Ghot said:
@RubberDuck

Do you have Fast Boot, enabled in your BIOS?
With Fast Boot enabled... it skips a lot of the POST test during boot. It'll speed things up.

/edit

If you decide to remove Acronis... don't just try to uninstall it.
Use the Acronis removal tool.

Acronis Cleanup Utility | Knowledge Base

How to uninstall and cleanup machine from Acronis backup software

kb.acronis.com

I got you on the Acronis removal.

This bios has no setting for fast boot. I thought fast boot might be there but named or described differently. The only timing setting i have found is a Post Screen display delay. It's something like None, 2,5,10,15,20 or 30 seconds. I have it set to none. I changed it but sound there is no difference in timing at all. It's like it does nothing.

Ghot · Jun 2, 2022

RubberDuck said:
I got you on the Acronis removal.

This bios has no setting for fast boot. I thought fast boot might be there but named or described differently. The only timing setting i have found is a Post Screen display delay. It's something like None, 2,5,10,15,20 or 30 seconds. I have it set to none. I changed it but sound there is no difference in timing at all. It's like it does nothing.

Yeah, I wasn't sure if you had it or not. Some BIOSes do and some don't.
I found mine hidden away on the Boot tab.

RubberDuck · Jun 2, 2022

Here is an the Advanced tab in the bios. I tried to copy the PDF here but at 4mb the size is too large. I have managed to capture the Advanced Tab screen. Not much there to see. There are not many things that can be changed at all.

I even talked to the people at American Megatrends (AMI) He said HP develops their own bios and puts the AMI trademark on them. Since it's loosely called a gaming pc, you would think they would give a few more options in the bios. I didn't buy it to game with though. I bought it for speed. SDR transceivers need a lot of memory and processing power.

Ah well. Unless some comes along that can come up with a cure, I'm not too concerned. Although what you told
me about your boot speed this morning., this may be completely normal.

Ghot · Jun 2, 2022

RubberDuck said:
Here is an the Advanced tab in the bios. I tried to copy the PDF here but at 4mb the size is too large. I have managed to capture the Advanced Tab screen. Not much there to see. There are not many things that can be changed at all.

Yeah, you don't have a lot of BIOS there. :)

This is just my Boot tab, and there's tons of stuff under each of those headings.

Check out my BIOS manual, here.

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/SocketAM4/PRIME_X570-P/E15829_PRIME_PRO_TUF_GAMING_X570_Series_BIOS_EM_WEB.pdf

This is one of the reasons, I started building my own computers 20-30 years ago. More bells and whistles.
They give you much greater control of things.

RubberDuck · Jun 2, 2022

Ghot said:
Yeah, you don't have a lot of BIOS there. :)

This is just my Boot tab, and there's tons of stuff under each of those headings.

View attachment 30577

Check out my BIOS manual, here.

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/SocketAM4/PRIME_X570-P/E15829_PRIME_PRO_TUF_GAMING_X570_Series_BIOS_EM_WEB.pdf

This is one of the reasons, I started building my own computers 20-30 years ago. More bells and whistles.
They give you much greater control of things.

I built mine for a long time. I got away from it because I was getting a lot of them provided free through work.
I bought this one. I should have built it. Maybe next time.

Ghot · Jun 2, 2022

RubberDuck said:
I built mine for a long time. I got away from it because I was getting a lot of them provided free through work.
I bought this one. I should have built it. Maybe next time.

I just like building my own cause they're easier to fix, if/when they break.

ChaLug · Jun 2, 2022

RubberDuck said:
Here is the boot screen from the bios. The top one is the NVM drive and bottom is the clone. I reconnected them all since it didn't seem to have an effect.

I see in your UEFI BIOS Boot order screen that it shows two drives in the order you might expect to boot them from, right? I would disable the one you DO NOT want to boot from leaving just your NVMe drive as a boot source.

ChaLug · Jun 2, 2022

Ghot said:
I have two SSDs. One with Win 10 the other with Win 11. They're identical otherwise.
But I only hook one of them up at a time.

...

Both of my SSDs are 2.5" so it's easy for me to just swap the cables, when I want to switch drives.
You a LOT going on there on your OS drives, which I think might be the problem.

...

This is showing my Windows 10 drive, but my Windows 11 drive is identical, so when I swap the cables, Windows
doesn't get confused.

Instead of swapping cables, maybe just swap the drives? On the machine I am currently using, I have one of these swap racks,

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000KS8S9W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and also use this 3.5" to 2.5" tray.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LZWX6PD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

RubberDuck · Jun 2, 2022

ChaLug said:
I see in your UEFI BIOS Boot order screen that it shows two drives in the order you might expect to boot them from, right? I would disable the one you DO NOT want to boot from leaving just your NVMe drive as a boot source.

The second drive that was bootable is now nothing more than a data disk. I'll post an updated Disk Management screen.

Ghot · Jun 2, 2022

ChaLug said:
Instead of swapping cables, maybe just swap the drives? On the machine I am currently using, I have one of these swap racks,

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000KS8S9W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and also use this 3.5" to 2.5" tray.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LZWX6PD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I dunno. If I were to do that, I could probably find an extra 5.25" bay or five. :)

I don't really like hotswap/coldswap bays. Just more places for dust to collect.

I do have an eSATA port under that popup panel on top. I could probably find an external hotswap bay for 2.5" SSDs.

Brb, Imma switch to Win 11.

Megahertz · Jun 2, 2022

Drive 0 and drive 4 are MBR and have an active partition.
Drive 0 seems to be a data drive so it should not be active
Drive 4 seems that once was a boot able drive. It's now a backup drive so it should not be active.
If for some reason the computer is trying to boot from those drives it takes some time to find out that there is no OS and to look for another drive.
Make it simple as possible. My suggestion is to detach (SATA or power cable) from all drives leaving on only the NVMe and check if it is the first drive on the boot priority list on BIOS.
A problematic drive can delay the boot for minutes.
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Very long pause before bios post screen quandary

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