M6400 Slow BIOS Boot from Power-up

Do you have any external devices connected during post

It has booted slow and fast with and without a USB mouse connected. No other external devices connected other than a hard-wired ethernet connection.

Thanks for the 'space bar' tip.

It appears to happen randomly. I have confirmed multiple times that it happens when no (apparent) changes have been made to the BIOS configuration. I say apparent because I am making no changes to it, but the BIOS is "seeing" something that is causing it to do additional work.

I suspect that there is a problem/bug with the BIOS logic that is used to decide whether to do additional stuff, e.g., test memory.

Thanks,

Frustrated in M6400ville.

The reason that it takes longer during this time is due to the system checking the memory.  This should only happen if there have been changes in the BIOS or something like that.  You can bypass this step by pressing the space bar.

Mano@Dell

I had just the same issue yesterday..... found the spacebar tip on my own.... I can't confirm it will happen again.

I have the same problem.  Occassionally, it hangs there for several minutes.  I have not tried pressing the space bar.  I will do that the next time it happens.

I am searching for answers too. A couple of things. I have Bios A09, 8 GB of RAM from Dell and I have the TPM chip enabled. My M6400 always takes several minutes to post if I don't escape out of it. On top of that it will reboot and go through the post twice. There is nothing in the Bios system logs that indicate an issue.

Just got off the phone with support. They had me take apart the laptop and re-seat all 4 memory DIMMs and hard drive. Nothing changed so they have decided to send me a new laptop since this one is less than 3 weeks old.

Is there any option in the bios for things like fast boot or disable mem check?

I've have 16MB of RAM on my M6400 that I have owned for a year.  Usually, it boots up without a glitch; but many times it hangs for several minutes during boot.  After much frustration, I quit trying to fix it.  I just walk away and return in five minutes at which time the machine is finished booting.  Because I have so much memory,  I suspect it is doing some kind of check of the memory.  And sometimes just pressing the space bar seems to bypass the checking and allows the boot process to complete.  I have read postings of others with the M6400 who have the same problem.  But I have yet to see an explanation of what causes the occassional slow boot or how to fix it. 
 

My co-worker and I both have new M6400. He figured out that if you interupt the POST then the next time you boot it will do a thorough check (long POST). That probably explains most peoples inconsistent boot time reports. My issues are a little more complicated. I believe they are related to Windows 7 and Bitlocker. Especially Bitlocker pre-boot authentication but I am not sure why I am seeing my M6400 go through the POST twice. My guess at the moment is that Dell and Microsoft are using the MBR and expecting their software to run first but end up stepping on each other. Once I disabled Bitlocker pre-boot I was able to get an initial fast POST but it still POSTs a 2nd time.

Here is a youtube video to verify the problem.  Nothing exciting. Its meant to hopefully point out the problem to someone at Dell. Run time is 4:25 and goes from shutdown to fast POST, long POST, OS booting. The POST portion is 3:40.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4oczaOAj3U

I took the next few logical steps and disabled pre-boot for Bitlocker. This did not change the laptop going through the POST sequence twice. I then decrypted the drive and turned off Bitlocker. The double POST issue would still occur as shown in the video in my above post.

Once Bitlocker was completely disabled I could now turn off TPM in the BIOS. Once TPM was disabled the double POST problem went away!!!!! And as long as I don't interrupt the POST process every subsequent POST goes fast. I hope this helps a few people but more importantly I hope DELL fixes this.

Your postings have been very helpful to me.  I now understand why the POST takes so long, but not every time.  I hope someone from DELL reads your message.  I have seen numerous cases where they have been unable to resolve the slow boot problem with the M6400 and have sent a replacement machine, only to find that the problem continued.  Thanks for your research and the information you have provided.

I also have this problem.  I clearly remember that it started when I upgraded from 4 GB of memory to 8 GB of memory (4 x 2GB modules).  I later replaced the 4 x 2GB modules with 2 x 4 GB modules, thinking it might be a memory timing issue with mismatched modules.  This change did not help (though it did make my system marginally faster due to higher speed RAM)

I have an M6400, with TPM (fingerprint scanner).  My theory now is that if the memory size changes while the TPM is activated, the boot times take a long time (appears to be doing an extended memory validation test), and it never seems to go back to the fast boot even after the boot is successful. 

I think it is reasonable to suspect the TPM and memory test are interacting in an undesirable way.  This probably needs to be fixed in BIOS.  Maybe memory size is a parameter validated by the TPM???

Disabling TPM might make sense if you don't use it, but does anyon know if the problems come back if you then re-enable TPM?

Paul

I found this post a while back when I had the same issues.  The space bar trick was awesome.  But an unrelated problem with the system board required me to get a new board.  Once I had the new board in, the double post problem is GONE.  For anyone still (barely) in warranty, it might be a step to consider.