Slow PRE BIOS boot.. after motherboard swap by dell AW18

Hello,

some times ago dell swaped my Alienware 18 motherboard because of a faulty DVD sata connector.

Now when i press power on my laptop. it all light up "logo and led" but screen stay dark. it take about 15 seconds then the screen power up... then 5 more seconds ,,, i see the alienware in the screen with windows 8 loading balls....

i just upgraded to A04 same thing...

anybody know why it does that?


thank you!

 

anyone ?

its just happening to me or its normal?

 

What are your UEFI boot settings like?

 

im using uefi fast boot off and secure boot enabled.

 

I don't know for sure, but it seems to be typical on the new machines. This 18 is the same way and so was the 17 that I had for a while. I think it may have something to do with the silly new design of the BIOS with Secure Flash and locked NVRAM crap. SMI takes time to write all new values to the BIOS from NVRAM to prevent us from using settings other than those Dell wants us to use. If that's not it, then I don't know what it is. Other than being annoying, I don't think there is anything you are doing or can do to change it because the delay is pre-POST.

 

I don't own one of the new machines but if there's an option to load legacy option roms you want to disable it for maximum boot speed when using UEFI.

 

It's not the time from POST complete to desktop that is abnormally slow. There is a delay between power on and first visible screen evidence of POST taking place. You start with a black screen, then get the white blinking underscore in the upper left corner (often a sign of a bricked motherboard on older machines, LOL) for what seems like way too long until you learn to tolerate it. I am used to seeing an instant response to pressing the power button. When I first started using the new 18 I found it alarming and actually thought that the machine was not going to function after pressing the power button... it took a couple of days of getting used to this delayed action and it was a concern until I recognized that it is "normal" behavior. The Alienware 17 I had for a little while was the same way.

I run only legacy boot on both of these machines and my M18xR2 is almost finished loading Windows by the time the Alienware BIOS logo finishes loading and Windows is only beginning to boot on the 18. Once POST has fully completed and Windows begins to boot it is just as fast at that point as the M18xR2.

 

So the new 18 can run both UEFI and legacy BIOS? That's interesting.

Im curious whether switching to UEFI and disabling all legacy option ROMS speeds the process up - my money is on yes - but I know how averse you are to those options Mr Fox.

 

I don't have slow boot problem, unless I plug in an external HDD, then that'd add another 10s or so to the boot time. It's less than 10s from the time I press the power button to Win 8.1 logon screen. I am running UEFI. I also don't have RST Rom showing while bootup. I have SecureBoot disabled. Fast boot is enabled in BIOS, but Fast Startup is disabled in Windows. If I enable Fast Startup, sometimes it will conk out and reset the CPU package current limit (Processor Current Limit in XTU).

In msconfig, I disabled GUI boot. In essence, anything GUI is disabled. GUI slows things down. I have more or less reached a stable configuration now, so I am less inclined to play around with the OS and boot drives. I am purely on SSD, because I don't like having spinning drives in laptop. Laptops should only have SSD. And because I only use SSD, I really have no need for Intel SRT (Smart Response Tech). I have the Intel RST driver installed, since in BIOS the drives are set up as RAID, even though I have no RAID drives.

Maybe OP can post a few pictures of what's showing on the screen during the power on phases, so we can better understand the prob at hand.

 

Running Windows 7 in UEFI i dont have a slow boot time either,i can run both UEFI and Legacy Oroms but prefer not run legacy Orom is it slows boot times,dont need to see RST splash screen anyway....which i couldn't disable with Bios A04 but can with Bios A03,also XTU seems to work better with Bios A03 for some reason.

 

alright , so its the normal AW18 behavior then. thank you. it mean its not broken lol,

 

Well today i jsut configured another alienware 18 for one of my customer , and it does boot much faster then mine and its exactly same configuration...... that and i cannot activated computer trace in the bios for some reason,
tomorrow i will install windows 7 brand new on it also to see if XTU will be complete (i am missing lots of option right now) if not i think it might mean my motherboard as something wrong ......

 

Well brand spankin new Windows 7 install on new SSD ... XTU still is missing a lot of option...

i will try to clear the BIOS NVRAM using that crazy strick in 12 steps involving putting back ram under 1 seconds....... see if it clear the problem !

 

this is really weird .... why the hell can't have all the XTU option!! even tried going back to A03 .... NADA!!! wish i could try an XM just for kick and see if it would work then... but i don't have 700$ to send on a cpu that will never run as fast as it could in this laptop

 

well since dell changed my mtb , the system boot really fast and i have all the option in XTU

 

hi, i have same problem on lenovo y50. when i turn on my y50, about 20 sec screen shows blank then show logo of lenovo.when re-start load fast and no black screen.it was happened after i go out my notebook for fixing bios.Please help me.
thanks.