Boot time.

When I turn on my T420, it takes a while for the Thinkpad start screen to appear.

When I press the power button, the machine starts up, the HDD kicks in, but only after about a good 5 seconds do I go to the screen with the big Thinkpad letters and "Press the blue ThinkVantage button to go to bios..."(something like that).

I have an Intel SSD, and considering the fact the the boot process flies after that specific page ACTUALLY appears, tells me it's not a hardware problem but rather one regarding power up options.

I have uninstalled Rapidboot to see if there were any changes, and no, it's the same(I guess that was a rather contradicting solution on my part)

Any ideas? Not that the 5 seconds is a huge deal, but to justify my curiosity, if I turn this machine on and off 1000s of times, that will cost me days in the long-run.

 

Did you try switching to EFI only mode and reinstalling Windows? I know my boot process is near instant that way, I have a hard time getting into the bios now.

It was a bit of a headache installing Windows but it was worth it in the end.

 

Do you mean UEFI only?
What does it mean to use UEFI only?

 

Yeah, UEFI only.

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

where is the uefi only installation option?

I pressed F12 and started my recovery from USB falsh drive to an intel x-25m, the boot up is not very impressive.

 

Compared to what?

Why is it that boot time is such a focus area? I hit the power button, go start a pot of coffee then come back and login.

On the other hand, all of the machines I have that are using SSD boot to the CTRL+ALT+DEL screen or directly to the desktop in around 30-35 seconds.

Is that what you all are seeking but don't have? Or are you trying to get to 10 seconds? Good luck with that.

 

Redevils89 does have a point, my T61 ends the BIOS stage stage quicker than my T420 (I switched both on at the same time), its only because of the components and UEFI combination on my T420 allows to edge past in the end. I take the BIOS itself on the T420 is much larger and more complex than the one on my T61 hence the slight delay.

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In truth I don't find it much of a hinderence since the delay is quite short, but the warm restart issue with my Intel 510 SSD does annoy me however. Now that does take a while...

 

Red, I don't believe your boot up time is slower because it's not set up as UEFI only. I have yet to find any documentation that UEFI only renders significantly faster boot up time than Legacy. I tried it myself and didn't really see a difference.

If I may suggest something to you is to stay away from UEFI only until you do some more reading about it, especially on some of the compatibility issues it creates with your system and the software you use. Personally, I don't think the issues outweigh the benefits.

 

I'll cite an exception. Make sure you have backup/recovery software that understands UEFI and works. I am not interested in paying Acronis an extra $29 for UEFI support for no other benefit than shaving a couple of seconds off boot time.

I have my BIOS set to Legacy only. Long live legacy!

 

FYI, installing the latest BIOS and Intel SATA firmware made the warm boot issue with the Series 510 drive nearly disappear. I no longer get complete hangs and the delay is now down around the 30 second mark. MUCH less annoying.

 

Hdd 320 GB 7200 not an SSD.....Default everything and timed my boot up and it was between 52 seconds all the way up to 1:05. Uninstalled the fingerprint reader, computer manual, Nortons, and even the battery programs and now my boot up is 32 seconds.

Guess I can live without the batter power option from lenovo and stick with microsofts progam.

 

I wouldn't. Power Manager is essential in my view. Offers more configuration options than the Windows 7 Control Panel Power applet.

Norton was probably the biggest problem. I assume you have installed at least http://microsoft.com/security_essentials. Fast and free. My two favorite words.

 

I'm not trying to get to 10 seconds. My W510 does not have that 5-second gap(actually, it seems to be around 7 seconds). Sure, if I'm not in a hurry, I have 7 seconds to spare. But at least in my life, there are times when one or two seconds can actually make a difference.

If that ~5-second lag is a negligible problem, what's the use of spending money to upgrade to faster computer components? If people pay hundreds of dollars to save milliseconds, I do not see what's wrong with looking for a solution to reducing my boot time by 5+ seconds.

I was hoping to find a viable solution.


"EUFI only" did not solve the problem, and since I can live with it, I guess I'll just wait for an update or something.

 

Just trying it out to see what programs are causing the boot up time to increase. Nice to know that one can get the boot time down a good bit. As far as the program itself, windows program is all I really need and the lack of the lenovo program for now is not a burden.

 

Why not just use the built in Windows baremetal backup/recovery?

 

Because I want something that works.

No seriously, I switched to Acronis because it will do a restore to a target that is smaller, equal to, or larger than the source drive. The Windows feature won't allow you to target a smaller drive.

I have also had a couple restores fail on me with the Windows built-in product.

 

In my case, I am seeing longish boot times on my X220 with an Intel 510 Series SSD. It seems to hang on the Thinkpad, press blue key page often and appears to be timing out before booting very quickly the rest of the way. Someone mentioned the Intel SSD firmware. I may try that although I did see it but it didn't really say anything about the 510 Series; only that it was compatible.

 

How did you get a Intel Series 510 into a X220?

Nevermind, I see you removed the cover. Clever.

And the problem you are seeing with the series 510 sounds nearly identical to the issues we've reported with it and the W520.

 

Yeah, the concern with mine is that the HDD greenish-yellow light does not flicker during the first 7 seconds of boot when the screen stays blank before the Thinkpad page. Only after that phase does the HDD light start to flicker. Seems like it's taking that time to recognize the boot drive even though the HDD is set as my primary boot drive..

 

The SSD firmware I have is the most latest and I also flashed the updated BIOS on my system but that doesn't help much unfortunately. For sure it is better than a complete lock up that plagued the W520's but considering my 4 year old T61 consistently boots and restarts with no issues using the Intel X25-M you do have to wonder about the Intel 510 drive with its Marvell controller (and yes I have used an OCZ Vertex SSD on my T420 and experienced no problems with warm reboots).

With its quirks I'd be lying to say I'm not disappointed with it considering the premium we paid for the product but I'm willing to give Intel and Lenovo time to hopefully address the issue.

 

I agree. I'm pretty disappointed Lenovo and Intel didn't get together on this ahead of their respective product launches. But I put most of the blame on Lenovo. Certainly they were briefed on the Intel SSD roadmap. It's been all over the internet for months.

 

I have the same 30 second delay at warm boot. It occurs when I have an Intel 510 SSD installed, but not when a HDD is installed. I think it also occurred when I tested the OCZ Vertex 3.

I turned on the "diagnostics startup" option in BIOS and the 30-40 secoind delay occurs while this message appears:

"Thinkvantage active protection sensor diagnostics start /"

Is Lenovo aware of this? Have they promised a fix?

Otherwise the W520 is a speed demon - but this 30 second delay is annoying to say the least.

 

I'd probably switch too then

Knock on wood, haven't had a failure since Win7 came out on any of our systems. I do use BackupExec on our servers though.

 

Maybe the Intel 510 and Vertex 3 do something different, I do not get the same delay with the Crucial C300 256GB drive.

 

I have Intel 510 and I have that delay on startup too. It is 15 seconds from push the button to the THINK screen.

Also, when only the OS installed, from the push to desktop it was 35 seconds, after drivers and some basic programs it is 60!

 

I really don't get the obsession with boot time...

My T420 boots in about 20-25 seconds, including POST, and I haven't done any optimization at all (it's running in BIOS mode w/ MBR, etc.)

Do the extra 40 seconds really matter?

 

Yes, they are aware of it. One of the mods at forums.lenovo.com said it's been escalated. I have no idea what that means. I rarely see any feedback to the community from Lenovo employees there, on their own blogs, or anywhere else.

I guess we'll know when a fix comes from Lenovo or Intel. I hope it doesn't take too long.

 

I'd say yes. What's the purpose of getting a new laptop? One of the primary reasons is enhanced speed. If my T420 is booting up many seconds slower, I'm missing the greatest feature of getting a new lappy.

 

The only reason boot time matters to most people is when something is on their laptop and they need to get to it in a hurry. If the machine isn't sleeping with instant on available, boot time seems to drag on for minutes when in a hurry.

For instance, you are on the phone talking to someone and you need a confirmation number or something not available on your smartphone.

Many people like me are afraid to use sleep/resume. It's just been too unreliable and the last thing you want to have happen is have a machine randomly wake up in a backpack, deplete the battery or cook the silicon.

Of course, with all of the sensors in the silicon these days this should never happen. Theoretically speaking of course.

 

you do not need active drive protection if you have a ssd drive. remove it. there's no heads to park etc.

 

Use hibernate then.

 

I have a C300 and get a similar delay. What is happening between that active protection sensor diagnostics start and the user password or fingerprint screen?

My boot up to password/fingerprint is about 65 seconds with a properly installed and configured C300. Actually I see much of the delay between the windows logo and the password/fingerprint. I think the sensor diagnostics to windows logo time is only bout 10 seconds of that 65 sec.

Perry

 

Why bother? I can shutdown and boot quicker with SSD.

 

I'm with you. I did a clean install on the x220 and the only extra I put on it was the finger print reader. With my 7200 HDD, boot is 32 seconds using the fingerprint reader. I assume it could be a little faster disabling the reader. Ha, its my first reader so it still has that "cool" factor. Seems the reader takes a bit to actually login at the screen.

 

Could we get others to define what they mean by "boot time"

Here is my sequence with diagnostics on so I can see the boot initiation and POST.

12-13 sec to POST diagnostics
20 sec to Active Protection Sensor Diagnostics
47 seconds to complete windows logo up
101-105 seconds to password/fingerprint screen up.

The above is total time from power on measured by a stop watch.

This is with an SSD. With a HDD and my software load total boot time to sign in was about 4-6 minutes. It was so slow I never bothered to time it.

Perry
W520 in hand
X220 on order

 

That seems too long for an SSD. What progams do you have installed? Antivirus? Custom programs at startup?

 

Note he uses Diagnostic boot up, it does a more thorough check on the system so it will take longer than the standard boot.

 

I have investigated this and it seems that the amount of connected devices matters. When I am undocked and no peripherals are attached, boot time is 35 seconds. When I am docked, with 13 USB + eSATA + DVI, boot time is 65 seconds.

 

Wow, while using the fingerprint reader my boot to an active desktop is 32 seconds... with an HDD. I haven't measured each individual step in boot. It just takes 32 seconds before I can actually hit the start menu and get to a program. With an SSD, 105 seconds seems slow... hah 4-6 minutes is crazy even with a HDD.

 

define "boot time" ?

Simple.....The time it takes after one pushes the start button, till it reaches the desktop to work on. Mine took between 32/35 seconds. No use of the fingerprint or other diagnostics. Hdd only, no SSD's

 

Really??

I have a Intel 320 160gb SSD and Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit on my x220. It takes me ~10 seconds from pressing the power button to get to the log in screen where I type in my password. I didn't use a stop watch, just used the seconds hand on my watch, so the time is not exact, but that's a large discrepancy.

 

I have had an issue at times with slow boot up on an X220 with Windows 7 Pro and an Intel 510 Series 250GB SSD boot drive. What I experienced was a delay in the ThinkPad BIOS page taking maybe 30 seconds. This, however was not consistent as I've had quick boot up times where the ThinkPad BIOS page goes away quickly but this happened infrequently.

I tried a couple of boot up times after non-stop screwing around with BIOS settings and new drivers (have the latest Intel Mobile Express Chipset AHCI driver ver. 10.5.0.1026 from April 26, 2011) and have a one or two second ThinkPad BIOS page that results in a bootup from pushing the button to ready to go (password entered and mouse pointer no longer spinning) at 32 seconds. When bootup is slow, it's simply the same time with an added 30 or so seconds on the ThinkPad BIOS page.

I'm not sure what exactly did it or if it's permanently fixed but I'm going to monitor this to see if it's fixed. Hope this helps.

 

@snuci
It sounds like POST is possibly doing a full RAM check.

 

I agree but I could not find a way to disable it. Is there such an option?

 

I tested the W520 outside the dock (which has 2 HDDs, a scanner and an optical drive attached to it) and got:
8 sec to POST
15 sec to Sensor Diagnostics
28 sec to full windows logo
65 sec to password/fingerprint screen.

So the number of peripherals does make a difference. About a 2:1 difference. And I have a fair amount of industry specific software installed that may enter the equation.

At any rate one minute is way ahead of the 5-7 minutes of my HDD equipped T61 and reasonable compared to the 105 seconds while in the dock.

I am still interested in what is happening between win 7 logo and fulll desktop if anyone has that knowledge.

Perry

 

Yes, when you install new software or do updates requiring multiple re-starts, these extra 40 seconds add up.

I disabled it in Windows.

Unfortunately, there is no option in the BIOS to remove it.

 

Ah. I guess I kinda forgot about that. Not really an issue with Linux, except for kernel upgrades (which are pretty darn infrequent). Nothing else requires a restart.

I guess if you're installing a lot of software on Windows it can be a big deal.

 

This is software based. In Windows go to 'Programs and Features' and uninstall ThinkVantage Active Protection System to remove the software. Without the software, there is no Active Protection System, the same in Linux.

Active Protection System - ThinkWiki

 

The delay appears during BIOS POST (Power-On-Self-Test), after it checks the Active Protection System "hardware sensor".

Uninstalling the windows software has no effect, since Windows loads after the BIOS POST

 

So you're saying if I use the Intel Series 510 120GB drive with the ThinkPad W520 and Linux, I won't see this delay on a restart? Wanna bet?

This isn't a Windows issue.