[RESOLVED] 60 second wait until boot menu is seen
Hello all,
I have True Image 2013 and just cloned my WD Raptor hard drive (3 partitions containing Win7 Ultimate 64 Bit, Vista Ultimate 64 Bit and Win XP Pro 64 Bit) to a new Intel 520 SSD. I used the manual sizing for the new partitions and the cloning went fine. All 3 operating systems with all associated programs work perfectly.
My problem that I can not for the life of me figure out is that when I initially turn on the computer to boot it up all I see for the first 55-60 seconds is a black screen with the cursor blinking in the top left corner. After about 60 seconds the boot menu finally appears with the boot menu of the three operating systems listed above. I use Easy BCD Boot editor to manage and edit this boot menu. As I mentioned, at this point I can pick any of the 3 Operating systems listed in the boot menu and the computer boots up perfectly in all 3 OS. The Easy BCD Boot editor has settings where I can control default OS on boot up and the time I want before each OS boots up. Any changes in this section of the Boot Editor only affects the delayed time for each OS to boot AFTER the 60 second black screen with blinking cursor I described above.
Has anybody experienced the same Boot Menu delay and know how to eliminate the 60 second wait before the Boot Menu finally appears so I can actually boot the selected OS? Thanks in advance.
Thanks for the reply Mark. However, the SSD is set to be the first device in the boot list. Weird thing is now it is taking about 3 minutes (as compared to only one minute) before the boot menu is shown. Everthing works great when the operating system(s) boot except this now 3 minute delay is driving me crazy. The reason I got this SSD is to decrease boot up times and run programs faster. Well, the programs do run faster once booted but the boot time with the cloned drive is very dissapointing.
BTW, the original source drive that I cloned shows the boot menu immediately. I am stumped trying to figure out how to fix this delay.
Jim:
That is puzzling. To narrow this down, how long is the delay if the SSD is the ONLY disk connected at boot time?
The same....3 minutes. It makes no difference.
I also just took out the cloned SSD and replaced it with a spare triple boot SSD and that spare SSD showed the boot menu immedaitely. Same thing with the original source hard drive that I made the clone from. The only hard drive that has this 3 minute delay before the boot menu showing the operating system choices is this new cloned SSD drive. I even tried to use my Win 7 disk and repair the boot manager both ways. 1) repair system from menu and 2) Command prompts with "Bootrec.exe" and then "/FixMbr" to no avail.
Update:
Went into BCD BootLoader and did a "Restore Bootloader Settings" and system is back to only 1 minute delay (lol) before the Boot Menu appears. I am not sure but I think Acronis True Image 2013 is having a conflict with the Master Boot Records between Windows and/or BCD Bootloader.
Jim:
The blank screen with a blinking cursor shows up after the Power-On Self-Test (POST) completes and before the system finds the boot device and attempts to boot from it. I can't think of a reason for a delay other than the BIOS not finding the disk right away or some problem with the disk.
Have you used this SSD before or is it brand new?
Some motherboards take a long time enumerating the USB devices (at least this is the case with my DX58SO)...
Pat:
I assumed that the SSD is connected to a SATA port, but I may be wrong...
You might want to confirm that the "Partition Starting Offset" for you SSD disk reads 1,048,576 bytes.
If it reads differently, please post the results.
Jim:
The blank screen with a blinking cursor shows up after the Power-On Self-Test (POST) completes and before the system finds the boot device and attempts to boot from it. I can't think of a reason for a delay other than the BIOS not finding the disk right away or some problem with the disk.
Have you used this SSD before or is it brand new?
Jim:
The blank screen with a blinking cursor shows up after the Power-On Self-Test (POST) completes and before the system finds the boot device and attempts to boot from it. I can't think of a reason for a delay other than the BIOS not finding the disk right away or some problem with the disk.
Have you used this SSD before or is it brand new?
That's a good question Mark...I never even thought the problem could be a bad SSD.
This is a brand new SSD so this is the first time I have installed operating system(s) on it. I guess in order to determine if the BIOS is having a tough time finding the SSD due to a defective SSD I could always duplicate the current triple boot install & do a fresh triple boot install of all 3 windows and see if it boots normally. However, I did a few hard drive tests on this particular new SSD before I did the clone and everything checked out ok and the SSD got a clean bill of health.
Jim:
You wouldn't have to install all 3 operating systems in order to find out. I would first clean the disk using Windows 7 Diskpart or Intel's utility, then do a minimal install of one OS to it. See if the disk is recognized and boots immediately.
The SSD may or may not be the issue; it may have more to do with the PC BIOS being able to recognize and enumerate the disk quickly. So another avenue to pursue is to check with the manufacturer of your motherboard to see if there is a BIOS update for it.
Thank you also Pat & Grover for your ideas.
Pat, my SSD is installed internally and installed in the Primary Hard Drive slot of my computer connected by SATA.
Grover, my SSD has three primary partitions that I manually sized during the cloning process. System information shows that Disc 1 Partition 0 has 1,048, 576 Partition Starting Offset.
Oh, to clarify, I didn't assume that the SSD was connected to the USB. I was just mentioning that I see as well a cursor in the top left (not blinking actually), when I boot my motherboard, then I see the disk controllers initializing, then I briefly see a blinking cursor when the BIOS looks for a boot device.
Now, this is the behavior for my BIOS. It is possible that the blinking cursor of the OP indicates some other BIOS activity than the look up of the boot device.
Oh, to clarify, I didn't assume that the SSD was connected to the USB. I was just mentioning that I see as well a cursor in the top left (not blinking actually), when I boot my motherboard, then I see the disk controllers initializing, then I briefly see a blinking cursor when the BIOS looks for a boot device.
Now, this is the behavior for my BIOS. It is possible that the blinking cursor of the OP indicates some other BIOS activity than the look up of the boot device.
Jim,
Since all involved are still gathering information about your system, can I ask if you have any additional option ROM's enabled such as other storage controllers, PXE boot device,etc.
I'm also of the belief that this behavior has something to do with the BCD, offset or clone that was performed, but device detection for enabled ROM's when none are present can increase boot time between POST and the hand off to the OS Loader. In your case adding a OS selector might further contribute to this.
Shadow,
My thoughts exactly. See post #5. However, I must ask this:
Before I spend time trying to troubleshoot my system with software I am not familiar with (True Image 2013) I think it is best if I pose this simple question to this group first:
Is there anybody on this forum that has actually successfully cloned a perfectly operational bootable and functional hard drive that contained multiple operating systems? If so, what was the extent of your debugging (if any)?
PROBLEM HAS BEEN RESOLVED
Thanks to all that have contributed. As usual the problem was between the chair and keyboard!
I sat down this morning and re-read all posts and then revisited my BIOS settings. My Boot Disc sequence order was set correctly (SSD with Win7 was set first to boot). I then opened up my case and switched the SATA connections for both hard drives, started computer and went back into BIOS. After the cables were switched and upon reboot I had to reset the Boot Disc sequence again in order to set the SSD drive with Win7 to be first disc to boot. Started computer up again and much to my satisfaction there was my boot menu and my four OS choices shown immediately! Just to make sure I booted into each OS and all booted up quickly with no issues. All is well again.
I am extremely pleased with the purchase of my True Image 2013 as it has truly been an unbelievable time saver doing a simple clone of four operating systems with many programs, instead of four fresh installs and installing the many programs as well.
Thanks again to all for the input and steering me in the right direction to resolve this problem.
Hi Jim,
That's good news. So to clairify... The Raptor was not removed from the machine after the clone and once you moved the cloned SSD to the port the Raptor was on previously, the system booted as you would expect?
No Shadow, the raptor was removed from computer after it was cloned to the 240 GB SSD. I think the problem was where the actual hard drives were installed in the computer's hard drive bays, possibly during and after the clone. Just a hunch on my part.
To clarify, I have two HD bays in my computer. One bay I marked as "Master" HD bay position #1 because this is the bay where the single original hard drive was positioned when I first bought the computer. This original drive was eventually removed from MASTER bay position and replaced with a 160 GB 10,000RPM Raptor drive where I installed 3 operating Systems in this order: 1) Windows XP Pro 64 Bit, 2) Windows Vista Ultimate 64 Bit and 3) Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit. After that install I installed an additional 1TB hard drive for storage in the other HD bay; let's call this bay #2 and partitioned this HD in 2 partitions. One partition was 50GB to allow myself to install another OS in the future without disturbing my stored data on the other 900+GB partition.
About a year later I had some programs that just wouldn't run correctly on any of the three 64 BIT OS on the Raptor HD in bay #1 so I installed Win XP Pro 32 BIT on that 50GB partition on the HD in bay 2. After the XP Pro 32 BIT install I had to use my Win 7 install disc to repair the Boot files so I can boot into Win 7 again. I then used Easy BCD to finalize my booting preference and all was good
When I was cloning the three OS located on my Raptor HD onto the brand new SSD drive I remember reading in the True Image instructions to place the new HD in the position where it will finally be used. Therefore, I put the new SSD hard drive in the MASTER bay position and moved my host drive, Raptor into bay position # 2. I performed the clone and removed the host Raptor HD. That is when the delay in Boot Menu screen occured. Shortly after that I then added a brand new 2TB WD RE4 hard drive into the Bay 2 position where I did a fresh install of Win XP pro 32 Bit. The cloned SSD was selected in BIOS to be the first drive to boot and it is impossible due to the length of my SATA cables to have accidently switched the cables after the clone was completed. The boot menu delay continued when the SSD was selected to boot first. However, when I went into BIOS and selected the 2TB WD RE4 (with XP Pro 32 BIT) to boot first there was no boot menu for me to choose from but XP booted immediately without any delay.
So, I tried to figure out what setting in my BIOS was incorrect to solve the one minute Boot Menu delay but the cloned SSD was set to boot first, etc. Everything was set correctly in BIOS. The only thing I did not try until this morning was to switch the positions of the hard drives. So I figured I would try this: I moved the cloned SSD HD into Bay 2 and installed the 2TB WD RE4 HD with XP pro 32 BIT into MASTER Bay 1. I turned on computer and went into BIOS where I noticed the SSD was not set to boot first. I made the change in BIOS to have the SSD boot first and now my boot menu comes on immediately and I get to choose to boot from the 4 operating systems on the two hard drives.