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Can my T3600 boot any faster?
I received my Dell T3600 one month ago.
It is beautiful quality desktop so I also got the Dell 27 Inch High Resolution monitor and it is real quality.
I use Solidworks 2013 and Mastercam X6 and Windows.
The machine runs perfect.
But boot time is very long.
Machine was ordered with 250GB SSD boot drive and 320GB additional drive.
During boot I look for long periods at Dell Logo and then Perc 310 controller start etc.
Once windows 7 SP1 starts then it goes fast to log in screen.
Please can this be improved?
On my 15inch Macbook Pro Retina I also run the same programs on Bootcamp Windows 7 SP1 and the boot time is very fast .
So why can my desktop T3700 not be as fast (or faster)
RoHe
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March 2nd, 2013 16:00
Is the boot order set correctly in BIOS Setup so the SSD is first? See page 40, here.
What happens if you disconnect all USB devices except keyboard and mouse? If that's faster, you may want to disable USB Boot Support in BIOS Setup (see page 41 of the manual).
EDIT: I fixed the link.
theflash1932
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March 5th, 2013 12:00
The PERC card must initialize, load the RAID config, spin up the drives, read their config, ensure the configs match, give the option to enter its configuration utility, THEN boot, so there isn't much you can do about the PERC part of the POST sequence.
You can try to disable RMT (Reliable Memory Technology) in the BIOS, which may be what is taking so long at the Dell screen. How much memory is installed? The more there is, the longer this memory check will take too. ECC or non-ECC?
kirkd
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March 5th, 2013 14:00
There is a delay controlled by BIOS to allow time for selecting boot options. The default time is 30 seconds. You can reduce this to a lower interval in msconfig (type msconfig in the run command).
theflash1932
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March 6th, 2013 08:00
"I cannot find the place to disable RMT in the Bios"
According to the manual, it is under Performance (may need to Page Down to find it).
"There is a setup utility on the boot just before PERC controller starts (Control+R) and this may take me into some info but I am too scared to go there unless you guys can tell me what to expect and what to do (and WHAT NOT TO DO)"
This is the configuration utility for the PERC H310. It is here that you configure/manage the disks and/or RAID arrays. The H310 supports non-RAID or RAID ... I don't know if non-RAID speeds up the POST process over having a RAID array (potentially it could - it would not have to verify the RAID signatures), but to switch from RAID to non-RAID now would mean a complete reinstall as the two are not compatible one with the other. What not to do? Don't CHANGE anything without knowing exactly what it does - "look, but don't touch" :). Going into it will have no consequences, changing things might.
RadianR1
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March 5th, 2013 10:00
Hi Ron,
thanks for responding and your trouble.
I did go into boot options and I unselected the "diskette drive" (do not have one) and the "NIC boot" and the USB Boot in boot sequence. So now the machine has only two boot options which is hard drive (labelled as 04 drive something) or the DVD drive.
Then:
I also unselected "allow usb boot" under the USB menu
PC still boots slowly with a long time (maybe 40secs) while screen is showing the Dell logo with progress bar about 40%.
Then start to boot further indicating:
PERC controller start and then
Non Raid drives start
I do not understand a thing about this but simple question: If I want my SSD drive to be the start drive how do I actually select this? I have two hard drives on machine but can only select one.
I see no programs installed on the 2nd drive (which I assume is the rotating drive since that is what I specified in the order)
Should I not use UEFI since I think that is what is on my Macbook pro used to boot in Windows.?
I think I have checked under system and it seems the boot drive is the SSD drive but I cannot repeat what I did to get this info because I cannot remember all the steps like you guys can.
Chris
RoHe
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March 5th, 2013 11:00
I presume this is Win 8. If you change from UEFI boot to "legacy" you'll have to reinstall Windows. So I wouldn't go that route, at least not right now.
Let me ping my Dell tech contacts and see if one of them has better ideas than mine...
RoHe
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March 5th, 2013 12:00
Thanks for that help, Flash. :emotion-21:
RadianR1
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March 5th, 2013 23:00
Thank you Ron and Kirk.
I will go check the msconfig command.
The RAID start as explained by Ron: I do not want RAID as in mirror backup drives. Is there anything in that configuration which causes the delay.
Otherwise I have to say this morning I did feel as thought boot sequence was faster than before I implemented suggestions by Ron
RadianR1
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March 5th, 2013 23:00
I timed the boot now with stopwatch: 1min 10secs from power on until I have the Win7 logon screen.
Will go look at the RMT setting and report back
RadianR1
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March 6th, 2013 00:00
system runs Win7P SP1 64bit
I have now set PCI bus config to 256 PCI buses. The Solidworks is certainly opening a large file faster. But that was not my original problem of boot time.
I selected PCI slot 2 as the Primary Video Slot (this is where my Nvidia Quadro4000 card is installed) This did not improve the boot time.
I have 8MB ram (4 x 2MB non ECC DIMM). I cannot find the place to disable RMT in the Bios?
My boot sequence (Legacy and not UEFI) is
1) (Bus 04 Dev00) PCI Raid Adaptor
2) DC/DVD drive
3) On Board NIC
( I have disabled boot from USB and from Diskette)
I have AHCI operation enabled though Bios description says this only works on SATA1 and SATA0 which is "typically for optical drives" so do not think this has any effect?
It would seem it is just what it is and I have to live with the 1 minute boot time. At least the machine runs very well once into Windows environment. So it is not the end of the world:)
There is a setup utility on the boot just before PERC controller starts (Control+R) and this may take me into some info but I am too scared to go there unless you guys can tell me what to expect and what to do (and WHAT NOT TO DO)
Chris
RadianR1
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March 6th, 2013 00:00
I have set the Bios time down to 10secs via MSCONFIG. This did not improve overall boot time