DELL PC taking 5+minuts to boot

felox · 07 Oct 2021

fireberd said:

Although I build my own desktops (that are also used in my recording studio), the best laptop I've owned is a Dell.

I guess that is okay as long as they refund me. If not then i'll find it unacceptable.

I did not know you had recording studio (I do see you playing an instrument but can't make it out as Its small on my phone.), Think you are well placed to understand my issue.

The PC is to run Reaper, Ableton and several VSTs. I told the sales person that when I bought it. She focussed on the PC being quiet but said that it would do what I wanted. However it spits and farts and garbles stuff that my gen 3 i7 laptop handles fine.

further investigation and the use of latencymon has shown that minutes after boot up the PC latency figures are in the red and it is the Nvidia drivers that are mostly to blame. This is why I want to remove the card and the nvidea drivers.

Yesterday a dell rep changed the mobo and reloaded MS OS (not DELLs) and I have no latency issues when running up reaper as long as the nvidea card is out and drivers not installed. but it is hit and mis whether the OS boots and when it does it still takes the 10mins.

I think you'll totally get where i'm coming from if you use a DAW.

fireberd · 07 Oct 2021

My main instrument is Pedal Steel Guitar, but I also play 6 string guitar and bass. I have Cakewalk (Sonar) and Studio One 4.6 Pro DAWs. Lots of VST's including Melodyne and Izotope Ozone (V9). I use Ozone for mastering.

I've had audio problems (and Latency Mon ) with NVIDIA video cards. For that reason I only use AMD Radeon video cards.
The Dell Support Assist is one source of audio problems. A carryover from earlier days I always disable the NIC (Internet) when doing any DAW work.

The clean install is one option. I had to do that on my Dell laptop (Inspiron 15 Gaming 5577). Its a "gaming" laptop but I bought it for DAW use and the gaming laptops have more (better) cooling. With the original Dell install I couldn't completely get it clean for recording. It came with an M.2 SSD and space to add a laptop hard drive or full size SSD. I had a spare full size SSD so I installed it and made a Dual Boot system. One Win 10 is the original Dell install, the second install was a clean install with Win 10, drivers and DAW software only. If I want to use the laptop for Internet or whatever I boot to the Dell image. If I want to do DAW work I boot to the second install.

In your situation, if you can't get a refund the best option would be to replace the NVIDIA with an AMD Radeon. You have to be careful with that to get one that will run with the available power supply power. Another "gotcha", Dell in most cases uses an OEM low power version video card.

On the other hand, I have a friend in Nashville with a studio that has a stock Dell XPS 8930 running ProTools without problems.

felox · 07 Oct 2021

I'm still not quite sure what it is that Dell are doing because it does work when booted so the integrated GPU is not disabled. I does in fact work fine as long as the Nvidia card is installed. It;s not something I want to do but if worst comes to worst I can probably get away with leaving in sleep most of the time. It will be more problematic when I want to dual boot. I don't like the idea of having to wait 10 mins every time I want to do that!!.

Anyways Thanks again FireBerd, I will update the thread if it gets resolved /cheers

fireberd · 07 Oct 2021

We have found two other users with the same or similar slow boot problems with Intel video on the 9340.
The one that reported, apparently, the identical problem got it working with an actual Display Port monitor, not an adapter.

Please post what transpires today with the tech.
Also what BIOS version.

Thanks/Jack

fireberd · 09 Oct 2021

Any update?

fireberd · 13 Oct 2021

Its been a week and no update. I'm going to assume its either been resolved or the PC was returned.

felox · 13 Oct 2021

fireberd said:

Its been a week and no update. I'm going to assume its either been resolved or the PC was returned.

Hey Jack - sorry, I didn't see an email notification that you posted 4 days ago.

No resolution. It's still with DELL 2nd level support afaik. I will let you know though as I am expecting a call from them tomorrow latest.

thanks for checking back.
Cheers

edit......

actually an update from my end..... inconclusive but....

I have found that part of the issue is that there is no visibility when booting with GUI (metro?) boot. However there is when it is turned off and I see the boot menu on the black screen. Also even when all the GUI boxes were unchecked in msconfig I still could not see the text menu. I don't fully remember but I think I only got the text boot screen when I changed it in easybcd.

secondly and more useful.... I am getting better results if I connect a 2nd monitor (1080p) to the display port and the 4K to the HDMI. It seems the 2nd monitor allows the boot screen to appear and then hands off to the 4K TV when an OS is chosen.

I only got to test this today so I don't have great understanding of what's going on still. It could be the fact it is seeing 1080p instead of 4k or it could be that it does not like the hdmi in the two philips units I've tried.

I'm done for this evening so will come back after talking with Dell tomorrow or day after.
cheers

fireberd · 13 Oct 2021

Thanks for the update. That it appears to work with display port is what was reported on the Dell forum.

I had a problem with easy BCD on my Dual boot desktop. I had to manually key in the BCD info to clear it.
Here is the info:

DELL PC taking 5+minuts to boot-bcd-fix.jpg

Jack

felox · 14 Oct 2021

fireberd said:

Thanks for the update. That it appears to work with display port is what was reported on the Dell forum.

I had a problem with easy BCD on my Dual boot desktop. I had to manually key in the BCD info to clear it.
Here is the info:

Jack

Quick update.
Dell are sending out complete new Box.
I'll come back towards end of next week when I have checked out the new unit.
Would be very surprised if that is a fix tho.
cheers

fireberd · 14 Oct 2021

As there are two posts on the Dell forum of the same issue, I would be surprised if the new box fixes it. Probably a "global" problem but as most of this model is ordered with separate video card and except for a few like you no one would be removing the separate video card. Thus on a handful of users with the issue.