Slow POST time

[sleepymel3863]

I bought my custom to order laptop in 2015, haven't had any issues (aside from a bad fan when it finally showed up and intermittent fingerprint scanner issues with windows 10) until about two weeks ago. Plugged in to charge battery that had died, came back 90 minutes later and turned on, battery still dead. Plugged in, not charging. I thought great! I figured this issue was gone on newer machines... F2 diagnostics showed dead battery. It's 3 years old, could be time for a new one, I'll just use it as a desktop replacement until I order a new battery... 

That's when it went downhill...

I turned it back on, and it took between 4-10 minutes to post, and an additional 2-3 minutes to get to the login screen in windows 10. Once in windows, everything was normal. Just at restarts or if I need to move it, it moves REALLY slow when not in an OS. I have Ubuntu on a flash drive, and today I clocked it at 17 minutes from power on to liveUSB desktop. 

Things I've tried...

Bios updates. First moved up to the one from March 2018, then just yesterday went to july 2018, no change.

F2 diagnostics, tested EVERYTHING, only battery fails (known bad)

Reinstall (clean) Windows. Slow process, but doesn't fix the issue.

When it first happened, I upgraded to a SSD (great excuse to pull the trigger on a 1TB ssd.)

Hard reset, battery out, hold power button for 60 seconds with button battery pulled.

No CMOS battery installed, even slower post (36 minutes until the "press escape key for startup menu" appears in lower left.

I have scoured the web looking for someone with similar issues, and nobody has reported the same type of behavior exactly. (They have issues in windows, whereas I don't once logged in)

There was no event that I noticed that happened before it started behaving this way. 

Can anyone point me in the right direction for firmware updates or help troubleshoot this? I own a computer repair business and this one has me stumped (glad this is personal and not a customer's)

edit: added additional items tried to get post faster.

[sleepymel3863]

Sorry for any typos, I'm on my cell and autocorrect is failing (as is common nowadays)

[Photoray002]

That is really strange.

Did you try disconnecting the battery, doing a hard reset (hold the power button in for 20 sec) then reconnect the Charger but leave the battery disconnected and give it a try?

[sleepymel3863]

Hard reset, battery in, battery out, any possible combination aside from replacing the battery I could think of I've tried them all. I've got an HP Z420 I'm using as my "portable" rig for service calls where I need my own machine (the z220 is a whole other problem I'll deal with after I fix this Envy laptop).

The bios in these is very basic, was hoping upgrading to .56 would allow me to control Intel ME (my thought on why it takes so long to post after reading another post elsewhere) but no joy.

[Photoray002]

@REO51ST   You ever see anything like this pass through your shop?

[REO51ST · Accepted solution]

@sleepymel3863

Have you tried replacing your SMART AC adapter???

SMART AC's have the center pin that is used to communicate with the laptop.

I have seen a bad battery slow a boot process.

The bad battery is sending requests to the CPU to have the SMART AC charge the battery and being a bad battery it floods the CPU with requests to charge.

I think the same can be said that a bad AC could slow the boot???

REO

[sleepymel3863]

I have not tried replacing the smart ac. There is no difference with battery in or out of the machine, but I can see where that could slow post. I'll have to order a new one and a batteryand see if that shores up the issue or not. Probably two weeks out from that. Any other ideas in the meantime?

[sleepymel3863]

Got a friend with the same laptop (dropped off for SSD upgrade) and tested mine with his battery. Boots fine! My battery in his laptop recreates same issue. With no battery in mine I still have longer boot times, but they are now manageable (10 seconds before screen illumintes vs minutes). Wonder if the UEFI was *somehow* holding onto the battery needing to be charged once battery was removed, and was looking for the battery at boot to finish the charge battery command. My charger works just fine on both laptops. Thanks for the help!

[REO51ST]

@sleepymel3863

Glad you worked it out and thanks for posting back.

I am sure this will help others in the future.

REO