Boot Camp - Slow Startup

A

aaphid

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I've just loaded Snow Leopard onto a newly formatted drive and then installed Boot Camp.

Whenever I hold Alt at startup and then select Windows the computer seems to freeze for about a minute and then starts loading windows. While it is frozen I can't move the mouse cursor and nothing seems to be happening.

Is it normal for it to take so long?

Here's what it looks like...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2WuSJIrKmU
 
I've seen it with machines that have bad RAM, HDs, optical drives, and bad logic boards. Its really hard to put a finger on. If it only happens when booting to the windows partition I wouldn't worry too much about it. You can always put in your original disk 1 installer and power on holding the D key to run Apple hardware test.
 
Well then try to use System Preferences->Startup Disk and see if the windows partition shows up. If It does just select that. Then when in Windows and want to go back to OS X (if you installed the Boot Camp drivers into Windows) just go to Control Panel and the Boot Camp drivers should have installed a Control panel called Startup Disk (in Windows 7 it is in the BootCamp Control Panel).

After selecting the Startup disk, just restart and it boot to that selection you made. Clever isn't it?
 
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Thanks Satcomer but I think I'm narrowing this down now.

I took the Mini to an Applestore Genius Bar and when we started it up there it was fast and started loading Windows in 7 seconds as against 40 seconds before. Bring it home and it's taking 40 seconds again.

The only difference that I can see is that at the shop the Airport bar on the lower part of the screen doesn't show up. And on the demonstrations that I have seen and the YouTube videos I have seen this is not there either.

So I suppose the question now is:-

Why is the Airport network bar coming up at home and not elsewhere and how do I stop it?
 
Hello aaphid. I saw that you posted your problem in a few other boards. I'm facing the same issue with both my MBP. Did you find a solution to your problem?
Thank you.
 
What do you mean by "Airport network bar"?
Do you mean the wireless network icon in the Windows Task bar?jj

Please describe what that looks like, and when you see it -
Do you see it when you hold Alt at boot, and it's on your Boot drive select screen? - and is one of the icons that shows up? Does it look like a world globe?
 
DeltaMac said:
What do you mean by "Airport network bar"?
Click to expand...

Good question. I don't know what else to call it but if there is an official name for it I would like to know.

Basically if you hold down the option key at startup the Mac will take you to a screen where you are presented with a row of icons for the different drives and bootcamp partition that you can boot from. This is the screen I'm referring to. Underneath this row of icons is a bar and to the left of the bar is the airport/wifi icon. There is a dropdown menu that appears when you click on this bar. So that's it. It appears before you actually start loading any OS stuff. You can see it on the video.

When I take the Mac away from home, like the local Apple Genius Bar, I don't have this bar appear. Bring it home and it's there again.
 
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Just because it wasn't connected to your wireless network when you were at the Apple store has nothing to do with it. But if you want to test the theory and not take my word for it you can click on the airport status icon on the toolbar and select "turn airport off" then restart to see if it makes a difference, which I doubt it will because this is happening in EFI. Just to make sure its not a problem with your Windows partition you can put in your installer DVD to boot through using boot picker and see if it does the same thing booting to an installer DVD.
 
Maybe a simple PRAM reset will help this.

When you click on that dropdown, so you see other wireless networks, besides your own?
Does the boot happen faster, or is there any change, if you choose your wireless network at that time? Seems like that would be too early in the boot process to make a difference, but it might be interesting to try it...
 
I finally got the answer from Apple. Their Engineering department provided the following...

"Scanning networks can add time to the picker process, depending on the number of networks found. There is no way to turn it off. Only MacBook Air and newer Mac mini support this feature."

So if like me you have one of these 2 Macs and there are a lot of wifi networks nearby then it will take a long time to boot and there is nothing that can be done about it.
 
If you change your Startup Disk before you reboot, then the _long_ time for the Option screen to show all your networks would be bypassed. Then, other wifi networks should not interfere with the boot time.
 
DeltaMac said:
If you change your Startup Disk before you reboot, then the _long_ time for the Option screen to show all your networks would be bypassed. Then, other wifi networks should not interfere with the boot time.
Click to expand...

No, I tried that one as well. Even though you don't see the screen shown in the video it still takes the same amount of time to boot.
 
Doesn't quite make sense if the long boot is only into Windows, and booting into the Mac side is normal.
Just to make sure (for my own well-being :) ) - might even be helpful to time the difference.
Boot to Windows, then open control panel, then Startup Disk. Select the boot disk. then, shut down, not restart. Now boot without the option key, you should go straight to Windows with no pause (other than the normal Windows cruft)
Go back to Startup Disk preferences, and choose the OS X startup disk. Shut down, (again, not restart). Now boot again. - You should go straight to OS X, no pause, again, no pause other than the normal Mac stuff.
Do you still get that several minutes pause in Windows, but not in OS X? And this is without ever touching the Options-alt key, correct?
 
DeltaMac said:
Doesn't quite make sense.
Click to expand...

No, I agree, but it's the way it is.

I've actually done this experiment before a few months ago but just for the sake of it I did it again just now.

Hold Option down and then select BootCamp...40 secs until it starts loading Windows. An additional 26 secs to load Windows.

Go into BootCamp select boot drive as Bootcamp, shutdown & then start up... 51 secs until it starts loading Windows. Still an additional 26 secs to load Windows.

So overall, slow as it is, it's still "quicker" to go through the Option key method and wait 40 seconds for the Mac to think about all the other wifi networks that it could maybe talk to ...
 
You didn't post the difference in timing if you boot into OS X. If the wireless network picker is the culprit, then the long lag time should also be into OS X, right?

Can you connect only with Ethernet, leaving wireless turned off?

Do you really have a large number of wireless networks that your wireless card can see?
 
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