Slow windows 7 boot on 2011 MBA

Hello,

Hopefully you are using "Boot Camp" and not trying to install Winblows as the only OS on that Air. It will never work correctly, no matter what the hacking idiots say, and it's illegal - only a fool would do it.

If you want Winblows to work correctly, buy Fusion, or Parallels, and load it virtually. It works a treat. I use both virtualization products, and Winblows works as good, if not better, that when it's installed on a regular PeeCee desktop computer.

I have to use Winblows at work, as well as my Macs - I'm a Computer Network Engineer, and am about to retire soon - I can hardly wait to get rid of every last thing associated with Winblows, except for one dedicated, extremely high end, PeeCee notebook, just so I can re-experience some pain, now and then........ 🙂

Cheers,

M.

***

I have the same issue. Just purchased MBA 2011 core i7 256SSD. Divided the SSD in 2 equal parts using BootCamp and installed Windows 7 professional. The boot time is longer than it should be. I see the same issue where the logo animation freezes for 15 sec - something that would not happen with barebone windows 7 installed (no drivers) but would persist after the drivers are installed.

Not sure if it is the Intel HD 3000 (to verify one has to remove the driver and test without it) but this is DEFINITELY NOT NORMAL! One of the points of having an SSD is snappy boot besides snappy performance. As a company that builds their computers to perfection, Apple needs to address this question, otherwise I will go the store and return the computer (yes this issue bothers me).

I tried reinstalling windows, making all updates, installing latest drivers from Intel site - all the same!

After doing more extensive research I have reached the following conclusion: Bootcamp does not support perfectly Windows 7. It's more of a compromise (that is good probably for 99% of people but not enthusiasts that try to maximize the use of their hardware) Not only is the boot slow, but it does not support AHCI drivers which would give the SSD full read/write performance (and possibly preventing the OS from executing TRIM command). The SSD scores a crappy 6.9 where the same hardware should be much higher in WEI. Before someone shoots back about the practicality of these scores and their real life meaning - yes, in certain intensive scenarios they matter

I have decided that the most practical way would be to run a VM with windows. Apparently the SSD performs better at the cost of a penalty in CPU & Video. I think komoornik, you're not going to get a resolution on your issue till AAPL updates Bootcamp to address it (and that is not very certain to happen)

And by the way your video replicates my experience as well. Nothing is wrong with your windows or the installation. This boils down to Bootcamp.

EDIT: I would probably bring this thread into the Bootcamp section.

I installed W7 on my new MBA 11" 1,6 128, booting from external dvd drive, cleaning whole SSD drive, clean install, then I installed Bootcamp drivers, apply all windows updates.

Boot time is really terrible, same as komoornik ,feel like booting from floppy drive.

Please do something with it.

Thanks

I agree that the win 7 bootcamp startup time seems slow.

My system is a late 2011 ( September 2011 ) macbook air i5 13 inch with 256 gb samsung ssd and samsung display.

Bootcamp setup on 80 gb partition using win 7 pro. All the bootcamp drivers installed into win 7 pro and windows patched up to date with latest microsoft updates etc.

It takes me about 60 seconds to boot into win 7 login screen. It is about 30 seconds into the boot before I see the windows startup screen ( black screen with swirling windows colors in the middle ). It then takes it another 30 secs or so before login screen comes up.

Apple can you give us any idea why this is taking so long? I can boot into mac os x in about 15 seconds.

I went to VMWARE Fusion, and could not be happier. Followed their instructions on which services to disable

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-View-OptimizationGuideWindows7-EN.pdf

And I have to say windows flies on a virtual machine. WEI is 7.9 for SSD, boot time is around 25 sec. CPU isn't bad at 6.9 either. Of course you share resources with MacOS so you need to be careful what you allocate to Windows but the convenience of being able to switch between OS's without rebooting compensates for me.

This of course DOES NOT address the issue of slow boot and lacking driver support in Bootcamp. It's a bit of a shame when a VM can run an OS better than the real hardware.

komoornik -

sounds like you were able to fix this? what did you do? i've compared my friends MBA to mine, and his boot time is, for some reason, at sub 30 sec. while mine remains at about 1:15. help would be appreciated!