HP Z420 Bootup Lag

[Larry_Day]

Have a:

HP Z420 -E5-1650v2 3.5GHz- 64GB RAM- 250GB HDD-DVDRW-Quadro NVS 290 -W10P

During Boot there is about a 20 second delay with no video and then the fans come on full speed for a second or two and then the Workstation boots normally. All post messages are displayed and No Error messages are displayed.

We have the latest HP Bios/Firmware for this workstation installed.

We have changed some Bios setting like fast boot but no change to this boot Lag.

Is this normal behavior for these HP Z420 Workstations?

Thank you for any advice or information.

[DGroves]

the delay is usually caused by the bios searching for other bootable devices before the local attached drive

do you have a SAS/SCSI card installed?  a  add-in PCI-e SATA card? is network boot enabled? is the intel AMT enabled?

all of those will add to the boot time

you could also have a program that runs during windows startup causing the delay, test this by enabling boot in safe mode and see if the system loads quicker, if so then you need to determine which programs in normal boot is the cause

next i would note/document the current bios settings, then do a cmos reset which will cause the factory defaults to be loaded

just selecting bios defaults might not work is someone changed them and then saved those changes as the new bios defaults. the cmos reset will erase all changed settings and reload factory settings

[Larry_Day]

Hello,

Disabled AMT and Network Boot was already disabled, but no change in the startup behavior.

When the system starts there is a blank screen for about 20 seconds then the fans come on at high speed for about 2 seconds and then there is a video signal and system boots normally. We see all post messages and no error messages are displayed.

The delay we experience is way before the Operating System even loads.

We have a 9261-8i LSI Raid adapter installed and a quad port Intel Network Adapter installed.

The Operating System is installed on a 250GB SSD Drive which is attached to a 6 gbps sata port.

The Raid bios screen appears normally and the quad Port intel network adapter bios screens appear normally.

Just trying to determine why the 20 delay is occuring even prior to a video signal being sent to the monitor.

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

first boot from a full power off (not a reboot) can take 15/20 sec as the system will perform internal diagnostics

if i disconnect my z820 or my asus x99 motherboard from the ups and power off for one hour or more the boot sequence is about 15-18 sec

when connected to the ups, or just rebooting the boot sequence is about 8-12 sec

this behaviour is tied to both boards pwr lights, when powered off both boards have a light on them and will do a quick reboot, if the boards light goes off then the next power on requires a full system diagnostic and takes twice as long

which is normal behaviour

is the outlet your system connected to a switched outlet that is fully powered off, or do you have a outlet that is allways on allowing the system to receive trickle power when switched off?

[Larry_Day]

Hello,  The Z420 power supply is connected to an APC UPS.

Thank you for the explanation of diagnostics that happens during a cold boot which causes the delay.

Also diagnostics during a reboot that results in  less of a delay.

So our Z420 is working as designed.

Regards and thank you again.

[OmTatSat]

Try to enable fast boot in bios. For me it is decreased boot delay.

[Larry_Day]

We did and it reduced the bootup time by a few seconds.

Surprised that the system when booting needs so much time for diagnostics; have not had a system do that before.

[Justgosh1]

The driver for the onboard NIC is poorly written.  You can fiddle with it and turn off driver signing (look up the NUC running Windows server) which isn't worth the security issues imo (not counting the AMT security flaws) or you can drop in a cheap NIC.  Depending on your use case,l like the Intel 10gbe in the 8x PCIE or a dual port 1gb in the in any of the other PCIE slots.

[OmTatSat]

About what driver you write?

Bootup lag is even before BIOS can show setup