Windows 7 very slow to startup and restore from hibernate

hard drivehibernateperformancewindows 7

My Windows 7 64 bit ultimate machine is extremely slow to restore from hibernation. It spends minutes on a black screen with a blinking cursor, longer than to restart. It is also glacially slow to start programs after startup. Once a program has started, it runs great. It used to be faster.

I've done all the usual things to speed up Windows:

  • Defragmented the hard drive
  • Checked the disk for errors and bad blocks
  • Turned off unnecessary startup items
  • Checked for viruses (just Microsoft Security Essentials, no other anti-virus)
  • Turned off indexing
  • Gave it plenty of memory (8 gigs)
  • Uninstalled unnecessary programs
  • Tried turning hibernation off, defragmenting, and on again
  • Dusted out interior and fans
  • Unplugged all other SATA devices
  • Verified the drive is plugged into a SATA II port
  • Switched the SATA II port
  • Changed the SATA cable

I suspect the problem lies with the hard drive, a Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB (WD15EADS). The drive isn't exactly a screamer, but it shouldn't be this slow. In the Resource Monitor I see disk response times of 500-1000ms when loading programs. The drive is 75% full.

FWIW the "Windows Experience Index" is all above 7 except the disk which is 5.9.

Some more information… in the Disk tab of Resource Monitor, most of the active I/O processes are MsMpEng.exe.

Yet more information… a lot of the disk I/O is in an svchost.exe process which includes these services:

  • Wlansvc: WLAN AutoConfig
  • UxSms: Desktop Window Manager Session Manager
  • SysMain: Superfetch
  • PcaSvc: Program Compatibility Assistant Service
  • Netman: Network Connections
  • HomeGroupListener
  • hidserv
  • AudioEndpointBuilder

This is a custom build machine. Hardware is…

  • ASRock M3A770DE motherboard
  • AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana 3.2GHz CPU
  • G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 2 x 4 gig
  • Antec EarthWatts Green EA-430D Green 430W
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560

I'm out of ideas. What's my next option?

Best Answer

What version of the BIOS are you using? If you go onto Toms Hardware there have been a few people with problems booting up with more the 4GB of RAM. Also seems there is some issues with the BIOS on the M3A770DE motherboard as there is an update 1.6 for 4GB instant boot http://www.asrock.com/mb/download.asp?Model=M3A770DE&o=BIOS Might be a quick solution just to see if it is faster with just 4GB if you have two 4GB sticks. Just remove one. My gut feeling is its a BIOS issue or corrupted RAM.

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