Windows 11 - Slow Startup, wake from sleep fails

Will

Will

Senior Administrator
Staff member
Hey all,

My recently built PC is having some persistent issues with waking and startup. The main symptoms seem to be:

  1. When the PC is first turned on, or fully power cycled, it takes a while to start. The system powers on and seems to do nothing for ~30 seconds or so, before the fans audibly increase in speed and the screen comes on / Windows starts to load.
  2. The PC almost always fails to wake from sleep - I press the power button to wake the system, the power button changes from flashing to solid colour as the system turns on, but the system stays with a black screen and nothing happening.

Any ideas on how I can diagnose and resolve the issue?
 
These are some trial and error steps to see if they make any difference:

a) Turn off hibernation > this also turns off Windows fast start up
b) Place the computer into clean boot
c) In case there is no improvement with the above steps then consider deeper analysis using Windows Performance Recorder (WPR)
 
Have you examined the sleep study report? Probably the best place to start, you can generate one with:

Code: 
powercfg /SleepStudy
 
x BlueRobot said:
Have you examined the sleep study report? Probably the best place to start, you can generate one with:

Code: 
powercfg /SleepStudy
Click to expand...

Nothing abnormal is showing up in this unfortunately.

Any suggestions on how I can test hardware parts for issues?
 
Honestly the long boot delay sounds like a BIOS issue. Are any bios updates available?

Is this an AM5 motherboard? I've heard AM5 motherboards, especially with a fair amount of RAM, can take a very long time to boot due to memory training
 
How many sticks of ram?
If 4 try removing 2 as a test for faster wake up times.
Also what type and how many storage drives?
 
In addition to above, obviously you know to eliminate unwanted startup items. However, you can also eliminate some of the startup tests via bios (sorry, I still call it that) which aren't necessary every time you boot.
 
Tekno Venus said:
Honestly the long boot delay sounds like a BIOS issue. Are any bios updates available?
Click to expand...

I had thought MSI center was automatically downloading BIOS updates - but turns out they were just chipset updates. I've just updated from 1.10 -> 1.70 (latest non-beta release), and we'll see how things go.

Annoyingly Microsoft forced me to reset my PIN after the BIOS update and I lost a few settings like Wifi networks etc - can't stand Windows 11's MS account requirements...

If the issue persists I'll try some of the other steps - both RAM sticks were passing RAM tests

Tekno Venus said:
Is this an AM5 motherboard? I've heard AM5 motherboards, especially with a fair amount of RAM, can take a very long time to boot due to memory training
Click to expand...

Yes it is - and tbh that's probably part of the issue, along with it being a 1st gen new motherboard. I knew that some teeth issues would be a risk when I bought it, but I wanted the shiny new thing. :ROFLMAO: Hopefully things are a bit more stable after the BIOS update.

Also a risk with buying a high end motherboard - less users on the high end model, so issues are generally more difficult to fix / slower to be fixed etc.
 
After latest BIOS updates - current boot time is around 40 seconds from button press to Windows login screen. System also seems to wake from sleep successfully. The startup tests definitely seem much faster though - I'll keep monitoring it and see how it goes.

BTW - does anyone know how long it takes for your PC to go into the different sleep modes? I believe the issue I was previously encountering was with one of the specific sleep modes, although I'm not sure which one. If the PC was recently active, but is now inactive, it can be easily restarted. If it's been inactive for a longer period (e.g. several hours / overnight), then it wasn't able to start without a full restart.
 
Last edited:
Did some more digging into the issue @Tekno Venus mentioned, and some of the startup times are supposedly much better once AGESA 1006 is available for your BIOS.

The latest stable release of my BIOS is "AGESA ComboPI 1.0.0.5c update" - the 1006 version is currently in beta still, so I may wait a few more weeks before it's available in stable version. Or I can try a beta version and see how it goes - the system doesn't have anything sensitive on it, although I'd prefer to not brick it if there's a bug...
 
Actually I realised I did have a AGESA 1006 update installed - the download I picked was a slightly more recent stable version, that had the update.

Boot time from button press -> Windows Login screen around 40 seconds - still much slower than it probably should be, but there might be some other tweaks I can do / future updates to improve this.
 
You know all the usual stuff like what's in your start menu, fast startup etc. . Here's a little trick that goes further. In the bottom of the change your power plan screen, choose high performance, then change plan settings. Now select Change advanced power settings and then Processor power management. Set minimum and maximum processor state to 100%. SCL will appreciate the extra 50 cents you pay them every month.
 
Unfortunately most of the time is still spent in memory testing at the moment. Some 1st gen AM5 quirks. :-)
 
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