Long BIOS startup

[Royale3012]

Hi, I have a problem that has been bothering me for a while. Some time ago I performed a reset on my computer which keeps some of my personal files. It took a long time to install Windows and boot completely, but everything went fine. Since then I've been experiencing an unusually long time in bios booting if I'm correct with the call (where the HP logo is displayed and circling dots below, not Windows booting) it can take almost 1 minute. I have never encountered this problem before as I have a very fast SSD and a good setup. What is strange is rarely if I am lucky that this process (the BIOS bootup with the HP logo ...) goes very normally with a maximum of 3 seconds. Help me, please.
My laptop: HP Pavilion Gaming - 15-ec0004nk
Product number: 9QT57EA # BH4
Serial number: **bleep**
General technical specifications:
Operating system: Windows 10 Home Single language 64 bits
Microprocessor: AMD Ryzen 5 3550H with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx
System memory: 8 GB
Memory slot 1: 4GB Hynix 2667MHz
Memory slot 2: 4GB Hynix 2667MHz
Motherboard: 86D4 96.44
System BIOS: F.10
Video:
Graphics device 1: AMD Radeon (TM) Vega 8 Graphics
Current resolution: 1920 x 1080
Refresh rate: 60Hz
Version: 26.20.14054.1001 (6/5/2020)
Graphics device 2: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
Current resolution: 1024 x 768
Refresh rate: 60Hz
Version: 27.21.14.5671 (9/30/2020)

[WAWood]

@Royale3012 

You're combing different boot processes into one.

The BIOS code is firmware containing in a chip on the system board, and this includes the HP logo.  So, when you turn on your PC and see the logo, that is the BIOS boot portion.  That does NOT read the disk, so even if you have a fast SSD, or a really slow HDD, that amount of time should be constant and short.

Once you see the spinning dots, that is the Windows boot loader starting, reading the boot files, and then accessing the drive to read the startup stuff, load the drivers, and load the startup apps.  That time can vary a lot, from very short to very long, depending on how many drivers have to be loaded, and how many apps, and what kind, you have in your startup process.

On my laptop with an NVME SSD, the HP logo appears and disappears within 3 seconds, the rest takes a while longer.  So if your logo is appearing and then disappearing in  few seconds, the delay is NOT the BIOS loading.

[Royale3012]

@WAWood Thank you for the response. I might not know a lot about computers and the different terms and I might be confusing trying to describe my problem efficiently, so I will describe it in a "dumb" way. Upon starting my computer, I used to see the HP logo appear and disappear within 3 seconds (I couldn't understand pretty much about the spinning dots, but when starting my computer there is the HP logo AND spinning dots under the logo). After I did a reset on my computer a while back, the HP logo and the spinning dots under it started to take unusually very long times (like a minute or so). I have no clue why or what I did or what could I do to make it take no time like it used to be. The even stranger part is some times (after I completely shut down my computer and come back to it at a later time) the HP logo takes 3 seconds and disappear like normal, and this is not consistent because it can take a long time in some cases. In the case of restarting my computer, it will take a long time In the HP logo and the spinning dots like 100% of the time. It is confusing for me what can cause it to take a very long time. Again thank you for the response and I hope you understood the full problem as I really need help to fix it/understand it.

[WAWood]

@Royale3012 

Well -- your experience is different from mine.  I see the HP logo by itself -- no spinning dots.  When I then boot into Windows, that is when I get the spinning dots.  I presumed yours was the same -- sorry if I was wrong about that.

The difference in startup times is possibly due to FastStartup -- which is a Windows hibernation option, not a UEFI boot option.

Win10 has enabled a new hibernation process known as Fast Startup -- which is enabled BY DEFAULT. This is different from Fast Boot, which is a BIOS/UEFI option.

Fast Startup is supposed to dramatically speed up the booting process, but in some PCs, it actually slows it down or causes it to hang. It's also a new form of hibernation known as hybrid sleep -- and this causes battery drain to maintain the state of the PC while turned off. In some rare cases, it can also cause a laptop to overheat because the processor is still running and still generating heat, as this has been reported when the laptop was turned off and put inside a case.

Disabling Fast Startup might fix booting and shutdown problems.

There are two ways to disable FastStartup in Win10: (1) through the Control Panel, and (2) through an elevated command prompt.

Control Panel - Open Control Panel --> Power Options.
Select "Choose what the power buttons do"
Select "Change settings that are currently unavailable"
At the bottom of the Window, under Shutdown settings, uncheck the box regarding fast startup

Elevated command prompt - run the following command:
REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Power" /V HiberbootEnabled /T REG_dWORD /D 0 /F

In both cases, reboot Windows.

NOW, Fast Startup is disabled.

See if that helps.

[Royale3012]

I tried Disabling Fast Startup, ran a couple of restarts and shutdown/startup for the computer. Unfortunately, it didn't fix the problem.

[WAWood]

@Royale3012 

Sorry, I've run out of ideas.

When the boot time gets longer and longer and does not improve,  that is almost always a hard drive issue -- but you said yours is OK.

A lengthened boot time that does not keep getting longer can be due to a BIOS update. 

But intermittent issues like this, when is is long most of the time, but then short some of the time, are all but impossible to diagnose and fix.  You can spend the money to replace the drive and go through the grief of reinstalling Windows and all your apps, but there is no guarantee that those will have any long-term improvement.

[Royale3012]

I desperately went through many google searches to try any luck. Could my problem have anything to do with Hardware Self Test when starting up the computer? Can I try to change anything in the bios? Does it by any chance have to do with drivers or display drivers because I have this odd feeling that my graphic card has some driver issues? Can a clean reset fix the issue? I need anything that can get me closer to what could the problem be so I can at least make my searches more profitable. Thank you for your support.

[WAWood]

@Royale3012 

Let's make sure we are both talking about the same thing -- BIOS boot time as the amount of time required from powering on the PC until you see the Login/PIN screen; NOT the time it takes to get to a working desktop, which includes Windows booting.

This is important because the first of these is not affected by Windows drivers or by apps being loaded at startup.  Those don't come into play until you start loading Windows.  For the same reason, a reset -- which only reinstalls the software -- would also not affect this timeframe.

Folks have complained that recently updating their BIOS has lengthened their BIOS boot times, but apart from rolling this back, there is no solution for this.