Very Strange Long first boot with Force 3

[Serville]

I have suddenly have mysterius problem with my Force3 60GB.

It's used with my laptop N61JQ (AHCI Sata2 mode)

I took off the drive just to see if my new Z68 board will detect it successfully. It did.

I bought 120GB for Z68, and reinstalled Force3 60GB back to my laptop.

I noticed the first time , it took long to get to Windows desktop.

I rebooted, and it was quick, so I think it was just a wrong feeling.

But after 2 days, I noticed that the long boot is not just my imagination. It happens only on the First Boot after complete power off (no battery & adapter on the laptop).

 

I used BootRacer to measure my boot time :

First Boot : Time to logon: 14 secs Logon to desktop: 48 secs

Succesive Boot : Time to logon: 14 secs Logon to desktop: 7 secs

 

The sympthom is always the same. On the first boot, Win7 will stay on the welcome screen like 20-25 secs before reaching the desktop. Successive reboot after this will be much quicker, where the welcome screen only stay for about 2-3 secs.

 

Unplug the adapter from laptop, then the first boot will take long. Reboot/shutdown & turn it back on will always be normal with 14 secs + 7 secs

 

I have no idea why this happens.

I have tried :

- Secure erase

- Reset Bios to Optimized Default

- Took off my hdd

- Restore my image backup with Acronis several times down to last backup I made 2 weeks ago, 2 months ago , 4 months ago. Suddenly all have the same behavior.

 

Does anyone have any clue about this strange behavior ?

Can anyone help me find out what actually took so long on the first boot after unplugging ?

 

Fyi, testing with Atto, shows normal performance for SSD on SATA2.

I'm completely puzzled.

[Serville]

SOLVED

 

It is Intel RST problem.

Somehow after testing with Z68 board, placing back to my notebook & restoring with Acronis, Intel RST AHCI driver become "unknown device". I don't know why, maybe something to do with changing Disk ID or something. But Win7 still recognize and install "Standard AHCI driver" successfully in place of Intel RST.

 

It's very strange how the "Standard AHCI driver" could cause a long boot issue only on the 1st cold boot after power is totally cut off, but not afterwards. It must have something to do with SSD initialization. If power is totally cut (no battery/no adapter), somehow Force3 SSD forgets its inititialization, so the 1st boot become problematic with the Standard AHCI driver. Shutting down with adaptor/battery plugged in, somehow maintains its initialization, so 2nd boot or later doesn't have problem.

 

With "Intel RST" driver installed, warm or cold boot doesn't have this problem.

I unplugged power adaptor , left for 5 minutes, powered it back & turning it on, booting is still fast like normal. Time to logon: 14 secs. Logon to desktop: 3 secs

 

Firmware : 1.2