Slow Windows Boot

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Level 1

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Slow Windows Boot

I recently installed the Windows 7 RC (build 7100) on my Mac Mini (early 2009). The install completed ok but after I installed the drivers from the Mac OS X DVD every time I turn my Mac on it sits at a blank white screen for what seems like an eternity! Windows 7 eventually boots up ok, but I don't have time to wait 10 minutes every time I want to get into Windows. Is Apple's BIOS compatibility module supposed to be this slow?

Mac Mini (Early 2009), Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jun 17, 2009 2:12 AM

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Answer 1

dolbinau

Level 4

1,440 points

Jun 17, 2009 5:48 AM in response to techguy378

I haven't heard of this specific issue or experienced Windows 7 on a Mac Mini myself, but I doubt it's meant to be that slow - Windows 7 hasn't been perfect for all Mac users, I'd imagine when Boot Camp is updated with drivers for Windows 7 (hopefully upon release of Snow Leopard!) there will be less issues..

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Answer 2

pao1250

Level 1

30 points

Jun 17, 2009 6:55 AM in response to techguy378

I have Win XP installed with BootCamp on my early 09 mini and mine also takes a good 60 or so seconds to boot as well. What gives?

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Answer 3

techguy378 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 17, 2009 12:17 PM in response to techguy378

This is not an issue with Bootcamp. It is a hardware issue with Apple's BIOS compatibility module. My Mac Mini has 4GB of RAM. My other desktop computer which is NOT a Mac boots Windows 7 in about 1 minute. It doesn't matter if I do an EFI install of 64-bit Windows 7 or a BIOS install. My PC has an Intel DP35DP motherboard (Intel P35 and ICH9R chipset), Intel Core 2 E8500 CPU w/6MB L2 cache and 4GB of DDR2-800 RAM. Based on these specs the Mac Mini hardware is not significantly slower than the hardware on my PC.

On my Mac it still should NOT be taking 10 minutes from the time the power button is pressed to get to the Windows 7 desktop.

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Answer 4

Jun 17, 2009 3:41 PM in response to techguy378

Takes a few minutes with an iMac as well.
Same behavior-white screen for 2 minutes(I think-I don't sit and watch it), then it starts the boot-a minute later it's up and running.

Doesn't bother me at all since I rarely use windows.

If you aren't planning on gaming-might want to check out virtual box-free VM for windows from Sun.
http://www.virtualbox.org/

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Answer 5

techguy378 Author

Level 1

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Jun 17, 2009 11:16 PM in response to Johnathan Burger

VirtualBox 3.0 Beta 1 has the same level of support for DirectX as Parallels does so with Windows 7 it should be suitable for low end gaming. I do have one other question though. For some reason when I'm running Windows I'm unable to eject an optical disc from my super drive by right clicking the DVD drive and left clicking eject. Windows gives me an error message stating "An error occured while ejecting the disc" or something like that. Is there any other way to eject the disc?

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Answer 6

Jun 17, 2009 11:18 PM in response to techguy378

Well until Windows 7 is "officially" supported in bootcamp, I'd stick with Vista, which doesn't take 10 minutes to boot if it's that big of a dealbreaker for you?
Vista and Windows in general even on non-mac hardware still takes way longer than macosx or linux for that matter as long as I can remember so it's not nothing new.

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Answer 7

techguy378 Author

Level 1

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Jun 18, 2009 2:35 AM in response to davi angel

Unfortunately, Windows 7 is the only 32-bit version of Windows I have available. I wasn't aware that a company like Apple would make such a stupid mistake like not supporting 64-bit Windows Vista on most of their Macs. In the PC world 64-bit Windows Vista is the norm. 32-bit Vista is mainly used on older PC's that use processors without EMT64 or AMD64 support. Heck, I'm even more surprised that Apple decided to use an outdated 32-bit EFI implementation in most of their Intel Macs considering that the 64-bit UEFI 2.0 standard had long since been finalized when Apple decided to switch to Intel. Apple originally stated that Leopard was going to be fully 64-bit before it was released at retail.

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