Windows 7 Installation and bootup extremely slow

Lazure

New Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2009
These are my system specs:

Motherboard: Intel DG965RY (latest bios version)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13ghz 2mb L2 Cache
RAM: 2x2gb, 2x1gb DDR2 800mhz (PC6400) memory, totalling 6gb
Video: 256mb MSI NX8600-GTS OC (Nvidia 8600 GTS series)

When installing windows 7, it took about 2 or 3 hours. This was particularly a problem during the 'copying files', 'extracting files', and 'migrating settings' phases. Often times, it would get to about 14%, and stop there for up to 10-20 minutes, with zero progress being made during that time.

On bootup, it gets past the glowing windows logo part pretty quickly, but the 'welcome' screen is even slower than it was in Vista. Once I see my taskbar, it takes forever to actually be able to run anything because it's spending another 2-3 minutes trying to finish loading here. Chuggin' slowly. Once that's finally done, I get decent performance. I don't have anything running at startup other than poweriso, avg, and intel audio studio. The rest are stuff that windows provides automatically. Nothing unusual is running in the task manager process tree, either.

Now, Vista had similar problems when I -freshly- installed it, but not nearly as bad as this. The reason I upgraded instead of fresh installed, is because 64-bit windows installs have a major problem with my hardware. For some reason, 64-bit vista or windows 7 during a fresh install at bootup use up 100% of my CPU even when idle, even after the install is finished, and I must reboot after the slooooooow installation is complete to get normal performance. I'm aware this is a windows 7 board, not a vista board, but the problem persists into 7.

Is my system too weak for 64-bit? Or is this a problem with 64-bit 7 (and vista) with my hardware? Others I spoken to say their installations went smooth and quick, especially in comparison to mine.
 
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The install on win7 is slow, but boot up is insanely fast. 42 seconds to boot screen on my system, and that's after booting RAID arrays, and complete RAM checks. From the Boot screen to a usable desktop its only another 8-10 seconds. Boots to use in under a minute.

You might have some incompatible hardware?

BTW, my win 7 machine specs are going to be in my sig. It is NOT new.
 
Do you have AHCI enabled? I noticed on my system, Vista and Win7 that the system is really slow to install. I believe this has to do with AHCI and/64bit OS version. I never seem to have issues with my laptop (no achi) and vista/win7 32bit. My lower powered laptop installed 2x as fast as my desktop, which is a far superior machine.

Win7 32bit on my laptop only runs using 680meg of memory, My desktop running 64bit uses 1.12Gig.

I am not so sure that the 32bit is not just quicker...
 
I'm not sure if I do have that enabled, but my intel motherboard doesn't allow for much flexibility in the BIOS option department, as you may or may not be aware. I would have to look and see next time I try to install windows. It's possible that it may be an option that I can only have enabled.
 
To be honest fokes, it should not matter what hardware you have in your PC according to what I found last night.

My PC I have is a Q6600, 4GB of g.Skill 800MHz DDR2 ram, 1K Galexy PSU, Asus Maximus Formular MB, 6 x Westal Digital RE Drives in a RAID5.

All in a Coolermaster Stacker STC-T01 case that has too much air cooling as I never get above 27'c.

I was running my Win7 32bit via Virtual PC 2007 SP1 as this I found was the quickest way to do this. Though after 2hrs of the install once it was up and running, (SLOW!!!) playing solitare was not an option... SLOW!!!

There is somthing bad in this build and I am not imprest with the speed at all. What happened the word fast.!!!!
 
I would still check that MB drivers and Raid drivers are what they should be.
I had problems installing the MB/chipset drivers (Asus P5Q Deluxe), I managed and now it's running fast and smooth. Mind, I still don't have any sound ( Creative E-MU 0404).
I tried Vista 32 bit and got rid of it within a week, Win 7 is different.
I do believe that hardware and drivers are the key points to success, it's early days, give it a chance.
I made a partition on my C drive and installed Win 7 on the new partition, then I can go back and fiddle when I'm in the mood. Beta software is still in-complete software so don't rely on it as a main OS.
 
You very will might be correct there. As I didn't install any divers.....

Now that I know I need to use the vista drivers I will try this when I get home.

All the same, by now surly MS should have put all of the correct new drivers into the build. Its big enough don't you think :confused: Though then again its MS...
 
Officially, Win7 Beta was released less than a week ago, think about how many different kind of MB/Gr. Cards/ s. cards/etc. there are :eek:No way MS have got all the drivers in place, that would be unfair to expect.
It can be frustrating to be on the wagon at such an early stage, take it as a challenge, because, that is what Beta testing is. Don't forget to report back to MS, that's the only way they can know about the problems.
I will suggest that you who are having problems, set the Win7 to as basic as you can , adjust to best performance and forget the fancy stuff until you're up running smoothly, if you're doing all the things in one go, you'll never find the trouble maker :redface:
 
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Sorry I totally disagree with you.

MS have more then likely got the email addresses for every major hardware business out there. All they need to do is email the manufactures and ask them for a bundle pack of al the drivers they have and there you go... Not hard ;)

I scouted for drivers for more then 20pc's in my last job and each PC was totally diffrent. It took me 2 days, and that was for 1 person. Think of the potential MS have ;)
 
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Okay, I really feel the need to jump in and clarify some things here.
I would've done so sooner before all this got riled up, but I didn't see the post.

First of all, Windows 7 does NOT inherently take a long time to install. I've installed Build 6801 twice, and 7000 about 6 times now, three being on my own hardware. On my dual core Turion (a 1.6 GHz dual core with 2.5 GB of RAM and onboard GFX) it took approximately 25 minutes to install the 32 bit version. On my Quad Core desktop this was cut down to around 18 minutes.

Second of all, Dan, it just seems that you're having issues with your virtualization software and your hardware. I've had the beta in a virtual machine inside another version of the beta, using Microsoft's Virtual Machine, and while running a 720p trailer in VLC I could easily navigate the virtual machine, all this on my 2 year old laptop.

Lastly, Lazure, I believe you have two issues with the OS.
One: It was an upgrade. Not a good idea, as programs previously installed may conflict with the new OS.
Two: Poweriso. It's a mounting and ISO handling tool. Windows 7 at this point is incompatible with almost all ISO mounting software, in most cases to the point of the OS slowing to an unusable speed or not booting at all.

I recommend you back up your files if you can, format, install Windows 7 clean and don't install ISO mounting software at all.

If this does not work, it could be one of two other less likely possibilities.
1> Your motherboard drivers need updating, or 2> Your ISO is corrupt or has been burned at too high of a speed causing disk errors.
 
Okay, I really feel the need to jump in and clarify some things here.
I would've done so sooner before all this got riled up, but I didn't see the post.

First of all, Windows 7 does NOT inherently take a long time to install. I've installed Build 6801 twice, and 7000 about 6 times now, three being on my own hardware. On my dual core Turion (a 1.6 GHz dual core with 2.5 GB of RAM and onboard GFX) it took approximately 25 minutes to install the 32 bit version. On my Quad Core desktop this was cut down to around 18 minutes.

Ill believe this when I see it. Im going to wipe my 7 year old AMD and see if that does the job. It usually does.

Second of all, Dan, it just seems that you're having issues with your virtualization software and your hardware. I've had the beta in a virtual machine inside another version of the beta, using Microsoft's Virtual Machine, and while running a 720p trailer in VLC I could easily navigate the virtual machine, all this on my 2 year old laptop.

You mean to say Im having issues with Microsoft's virtualisation software ;) On a new fresh SP3 install of XP Pro. PMSL I like that lol.

All the more to go AMD.
 
I'm trying to help here, I'm not defending MS, I can be very annoyed with MS, BUT, this is still a Beta version, just released, maybe 12 to 18 monts away from being released as working. If everything was working, it would be ready, no need for Beta.
You seem to forget all the different combinations there are with different hardware, no way MS can cover all that in the first Beta release.
Take how many driver upgrades ATI/Creative/ etc. are releasing over 1 year, that indicates that their drivers are not perfect when a product is released. How many Bios upgrades have you made on your MB?
I've made 2 in less than 4 months, that's the way it goes.
It's not very productive just to have a go at MS, let's instead try to help each other and get the bloody PCs to run with an OS that we opted to try out, no one forced us.
 
He he he he, I love these discussions. :D

I just wanted to point this out as an idea etc.. that was all but hard hitting.

I do realise that drivers are updated all the time etc... due to bad QA and bad programming and also due to other applications changing the ways in which they deal with certain things etc... but thats the life of software. Been there done that, never again...

When i get home, I will do some tweeks to VM which I have thort of. Like setting the OS type to vista instead of Other etc.. vista drivers.. I will then make a new topic for these tweeks, hopfully they will resolve quite a few peoples issues. Then maybe make it a sticky.

If I had a copy that didnt expire I would install it on my test machine and install everything I have onto this for a proper test.
 
My first install on Saturday -an upgrade- took a very long time. The fresh install was much faster.

I just installed "7" on my 4-5 year old Acer Ferrari 3200 - clean install - and it was done in about 20 minutes. I was able to download the driver for the touch pad, which is the original XP version, with no problem at all.
Disk usage is only 11 GB for the OS and the OBDII scan tool software (also a beta) that I use to troubleshoot my Jetta.
That leaves plenty of room on my 120 GB hard drive.

Right now I'm running "Power Defragmenter" to clean up the install. I did that on my desktop as well and it now boots to the desktop in 48 seconds and is ready to rock in a little over a minute.

A clean install is definitely the way to go. I would start over again with my desktop, if I didn't have a lot of applications to load again. And it is working fine, now that I have been able able to defeat the improper rejection of my DVD drive.

I think this OS is not too bad considering the early stage of development. And Microsoft is doing the right thing by releasing the Beta to a very large group of testers, with a very wide range of hardware. This is going to work out well in the end.
 
It's true, I upgraded from Vista. The upgrade was made from an ISO in Vista. However, ISO mounting software was compatible with vista, right? Once it rebooted my machine out of vista, it no longer relied on the ISO for installation.

However, when I installed Vista itself, from the disc, a FRESH install, it took 3 hours too. In fact, when Vista got to the desktop after the install, the CPU was constantly 100% idle, nothing running. And it stayed that way. I could not even browse a webpage without it horridly freezing up or lagging. I couldn't even install any drivers. The only way I could run Vista at a usable state was to reboot into XP, flash my mobo BIOS to the latest version, and then reboot back into Vista. It ran normally, but still booted up very slow.

While I didn't have the CPU 100% problems with Windows 7, I still have a slow bootup and it took hours to install (or rather, upgrade) it. The reason I didn't install it fresh is because I feared I may suffer the same problems as I did with Vista when freshly installing. However, I feel I am not getting optimal performance for my hardware.

That said, I feel now that Intel motherboards should be avoided from now on. This is because I tried installing Vista or Windows 7 in a VM, and they installed within 30-45 minutes with no lag or slowdowns during the install on a VM (this was in VirtualBox, running on this very same machine)! Installing for real takes forever though? Grr.

On another note. Someone said Solitaire ran unplayable on a Virtual Machine? That's because Virtual Machines do not support 3D hardware acceleration, which Aero and all of the MS games run on now. Add the fact you're running it on a VM, you're not getting the full performance of your hardware to begin with. Try Windows 7 for real.
 
I was having major problems installing 64 bit W7, of the variety above.

In the end I gave 32 bit a go, and it installed and works like a charm.

I accidentally destroyed my old xp partition, so just put that back on, but will give the 64 bit version another go and see how that fairs.

I was very impressed with the 32 bit version though so far.
 
What exactly happened with your installation of Windows 7 64 bit?

Where did you download your 64 bit version of windows 7? What are the specs on your pc?
 
It would basically take around 6 hours to complete installation, and the UI was lagging extremely during the installation (e.g when you had to select a country etc or enter the validation key).

Upon eventually finishing, windows 7 would then fail to load - it would end up on a black screen with a movable mouse pointer.

System specs here are: E6600, P5n32 SLI motherboard, 7900gtx, 4gb ram, 320gb and 500gb internal sata II HD.


i've yet to be able to try the memory solution people have mentioned, where, ironically, more then 4gb causes problems with w7 64.
 
Hi Guys.
Came to this thread after a bit of googling and need help with my own problem which is very similar to your problem.
This happens to me in Vista x64, Windows 7 x64 and Small Business Server 2008 x64.
I am running Vista x64 at the moment which works out just fine. But the boot process of all 3 operating systems were EXTREMELY slow. I wait ages until the language/keyboard selection comes. I click next and wait another 3-5 minutes. Enter the key and wait another 3-5 sometimes up to 10 minutes. And so on. Now with all 3 of the operating systems, once the install finally starts it didn't seem to move the slow. Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64, once the installation was finished, worked great. That was the last I saw of that problem. But with SBS 2008 x64, I am experiencing extremely slow boot and shutdown times. I know this is usual for a server but I am talking about 30 minutes on a fresh installation with all updates etc. ready. Now I need to know what's wrong! What could possible be the problem?? I tried AHCI, IDE Enhanced, IDE Compatible in the BIOS configuration and none of that worked. What else could I try? Is this a known problem?
Best Regards,
Paul Wittig

PS. Hardware:
Q600 Intel Quad Core
Asus P5Q Pro motherboard (BIOS updated)
HD SATA2 500 GB SAMSUNG SPINPOINT T166 16MB 7200RP
GEFORCE 9800 GTX INNO3D VGA PCI-E 512 MB GDDR3

Unfu**ing believable. After hours of confusion, (this is NOT a joke) disabling Legacy Floppy Support in the BIOS of my P5Q Pro fixed the weird problem! The part about that is weird is that I don't even have a floppy drive installed inside the PC :O. I verified to make sure that was exactly the problem just to make sure it was not something else I did, and sure enough once I enabled the floppy the slowness came back. How weird is that??? Oh well happy it fixed my problem! :)
 
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