Why is my new PC so slow at startup?
- by rumtscho
Bought a new PC this weekend, and it works really good. Only I have one big problem: startup time. Its BIOS needs 62 sec to load, then from Grub start to pw entering screen it's another 26 sec. I think this is a lot, because my old PC needs 34 sec for BIOS and another 8 sec to pw screen. After I enter the pw, the desktop is usable with practically no delay on both.
The new PC is a core i7-930, running a Lucid Lynx 64 bit from a Intel Postville SSD (no internal HDs). The old PC is a Pentium 4 celeron (forgot the clock speed) running a Lucid Lynx 32 bit from an ATA 100 hard drive. Neither PC is overclocked. The new one has boot sequence 1.DVD ROM, 2.SSD (connected over SATA in AHCI mode), 3. removable drive. The old one boots from 1. DVD ROM, 2. HDD, 3. Floppy. Neither has a second OS installed. The new one has less software installed than the old one (I think), but the boot time difference was noticeable even before I made any installs.
As far as I know, just the SSD should be enough to make a noticeable difference in boot time. I thought that having a good mainboard on the new PC as opposed to the basic office model on the old one would also mean a faster loading BIOS. If these assumptions are right, I guess I must have misconfigured something in the BIOS of the new PC. How should I configure it for a fast boot? It has an ASUS P6X58D board with an AMI BIOS, if you need the BIOS revision number I could post that too.
