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Very long boot camp startup times normal?

I have Boot Camp set to start up in Windows (Windows 7). When my Mac mini turns on, I get the white screen for long time (a couple of minutes) and then the computer begins the Windows startup (which only takes a few seconds). After that everything is nice and fast. Is this long startup normal or is there a way to reduce the time spent looking at the white screen?

Thanks,
Brian

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Nov 6, 2009 8:40 PM

Reply
18 replies

Jan 5, 2010 1:52 PM in response to promark

Hi Brian!

I'm experiencing the same issue with my Macbook Air. Evidently, the delay happens before Windows is started.
Since Windows X86 uses the BIOS emulation layer in the MAC EFI, maybe there's some timeout before it resolves to booting from an NTFS partition.
Since there are a lot of people out there reporting the same problem, I guess we'll have to hope for Apple fixing it.

Jan 5, 2010 2:09 PM in response to promark

I wouldn't call it a l-o-n-g time but there is a period after the chime when the boot loader function is waiting for Option key (or others like Shift) input that seem to add a delay before any further OS loading.

As for loading Win7, sure this does not get straight into the Starting Windows screen but there is a few seconds delay in my i7 iMac, maybe 10 or 12 seconds after the chime.

If the Mini is taking "a couple of minutes" that's far too long and could mean the computer has some king of problem that takes time to resolve.

Try starting up with minimal peripherals connected and then check the startup times.
Do a PRAM/NVRAM reset.
Do a SMC reset.

One of those resets could be the answer.

Jan 5, 2010 2:26 PM in response to promark

I've tried resetting the PVRAM without success.

My Air takes about 60 seconds with the white boot screen, followed by a few seconds of a corsor blinking in the top left corner and a 40 second Windows boot (including login).

I don't know wether the Windows Partition is already accessed during the "white screen" phase.

There are reports of people who've deleted the partition and reinstalled, but i even tried deleting all partitions and doing a clean Windows 7 install, which still didn't help.

Well, EFI in graphic mode has it's disadvantages when you're debugging 😉.

Jan 5, 2010 2:46 PM in response to aldaverwalda

There are some people who get trough the white screen fast, but experience delays during the "cursor blinking in the upper left corner"-phase:
http://discussions.apple.com/click.jspa?searchID=-1&messageID=10755444

This appears to be a partition layout problem, as indicated here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10456990&#10456990

This indicates that the delay we are experiencing, which is prior to the "cursor blinking in the upper left corner"-phase, is still an EFI issue and not a Windows delay. I'm not definitely sure there, though. I'll try booting Knoppix from a CD and see how that works.

Jan 5, 2010 3:43 PM in response to aldaverwalda

I don't get it. Some people are affected by startup delays and others not? What's the one common factor with Macs having the slow booting? Is resizing and other manipulations of the Boot Camp partition the problem? I am apparently an outsider looking in and it looks like I don't have the problems because I am less adventurous than those having the problems.

I have Windows 7 installed on a new iMac, two MBPs and two Mac Pros. I have never seen the blinking cursor in the upper left corner of the screen during boot up, or had slow starts. The fact of the cursor appearing for even a second shows a problem exists. These Macs have all the available firmware updates applied. So I must question opinions that firmware updates are the cause.

I would suggest that where people are having these delays, reinstallation with a new Boot Camp partition may be necessary. Resizing a Boot Camp partition doesn't seem like a good idea from what people are saying.

What about people's Windows partition size? Is it too small? I always go for larger size partitions, like at least 100GB. 10, 15, 20 or 32GB is far too small. Leave plenty of space for paging file (and then some) after all applications are installed. If too small, don't resize, but delete and redo Boot Camp.

If the "flashing cursor" is that white dash on a black background, that is a Windows loading problem and a new install might fix it. And forget any subsequent partition manipulations.



K.I.S.S.

Jan 5, 2010 4:33 PM in response to Pedro

I'm sure there is a sub-one second cursor in upper left - and that is on my two PCs running 7 just fine. Maybe my imagination? or the BIOS codes some see (depending on BIOS etc).

Some people find 2GB RAM helps the boot process speed up. Also, seems SSDs fly during startup as well. 64-bit vs 32-bit?

How about EFI64 (actually UEFI 2.x, where 2.3 is the latest specification).

Unless and until Windows 7 can be installed and boot from GPT and EFI, I think it is hodge-podge.

Jan 10, 2010 3:58 PM in response to promark

Hi all,

on my quest to have an iMac running solely Windows 7, I have done some research on this problem and will be probably posting some details I discovered. Until then, try starting OSX, then choose the Windows disk under System Preferences/Startup Disk. If you don't have OSX installed, boot the OSX installation DVD, then do the same under Utilities/Startup Disk. It might solve your problem. Please post here your results and don't forget to describe your partition setup. (is it GUID/GPT or MBR? what kind of partitions do you have?)

Jan 22, 2010 5:11 PM in response to azazell0

First of all: right now I am talking about the white screen for too long problem (for me, it was about 40 seconds). I also get the 5second blinking, but that doesn't bother me very much. I have a 2007 iMac with a custom-installed Intel X25-M 80GB G2 SSD. Finally, my goal is to have an iMac running solely W7 x64.

For me, a clean OSX-Bootcamp-Windows install always fixed the problem (white screen for 40sec instead of 15). Then it SEEMED to go wrong after I booted from a Norton Ghost 2003 recovery CD (holding down C when booting), altough I AM BY NO MEANS SURE IT IS THE TRUE CAUSE, it might have been some other coincidence. When I partitioned the disk using W7's installer, the problem also showed up. I could always "fix" te problem by holding down Alt at boot up then selecting the disk I want to boot from. This way there was no white screen for 40sec. (Try this trick.) It seemed to me that after booting once from the CD the iMac had a hard time deciding which disk to boot from, and reinstalling OSX somehow resets this behaviour in the EFI. (there is no way to directly access the EFI)

Right now, my problem appears to be fixed. Here's how I did it:

1. I booted the OSX DVD, then created a GUID/GPT partition system with two MS-DOS FAT partitions (the second one for data. the disk utility created a hidden small third one, of course)

2. Without installing OSX, I booted the W7 x64 DVD (Note: I had to create an ISO file from the W7 DVD, then fit it for the Mac according to this link: http://sergiomcfly.blogspot.com/2008/04/select-cd-rom-boot-type-when-installing. html then burn it to an empty DVD. Otherwise I got the "Select CD-ROM Boot Type" error. This note has nothing to do with our current problem. Without this, Win7 wouldn't even install.)

3. I formatted the two partitions to NTFS using the W7 installer, then put Win7 to the first one.

4. I used viper's activation method.

Note: I always booted from the CD drive using the Alt method.

I can't tell you which one of the preceding maneuvers fixed my problem.

I have booted the Ghost 2003 CD multiple times since then, but the problem has not resurfaced. (BTW Ghost 2003 works perfectly, altough it is a PC-DOS based system and certainly doesn't know anything about GUID/GPT.)

An interesting note: right now, holding down C when booting SEEMS ineffective in making the system boot from CD. (I only tried it twice, though.) The only method to boot from the optical drive is to hold down Alt, then select the drive.

Jan 22, 2010 9:18 PM in response to promark

Yeah I have exactly the same problem on my new macbook 13". Getting to the dual boot screen is fine but once Windows is selected it goes to the black screen with blinking cursor in the corner for about 20 or 30 seconds, which of course seems to take much longer when your waiting for it, watched pot and all that...

It never did this with Vista or XP, its not a major problem and everything works fine afterwards, but still, be nice to get rid of it.

Jan 29, 2010 7:43 AM in response to abstractrobbie

My latest revision MBP and MM both got rid of the white screen in just around 2 seconds, then one day on the MBP I used the boot menu to boot from a windows dvd to make sure it was bootable and ever since it has taken around 30 seconds. However on my MM, I've booted numerous times from the windows dvd to reinstall windows and it's always been lickety-split on the white screen.

There was a case before I wiped my MM that it was taking over a minute on the white screen though, so wiping it is one way to rid yourself of the white screen delay. I think it's the point that boot camp assistant tells you to start the windows installation that it writes something special to the boot manager making it quick, I think it's not the same as using startup disc. When I tried startup disc from the OSX disc, it could not find my windows, probably because I've wiped and installed only windows on my macs now...

SH

Very long boot camp startup times normal?

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