External drives and boot speed correlation

I finally moved out from RC and clean installed Windows 7 Ultimate.

For the most of the part, I've been very satisfied.

I was amazed at how fast it actually boot.

Then from some point it took close to 70 seconds.. then I started to tweak msconfig, disable services, etc... but still the same while other two laptops (I clean installed 3 laptops including my family member's at the same time) were becoming more fast...

I had some opinions... maybe fingerprint, bluetooth, etc..

Later, I figured it out that because my Logitech AudioHub plugged onto my laptop's usb has WD external hard drive, printer, and Samsung DVD Drive plugged in.

So I unplugged the USB Cable and it boot again fast.....

I wasted almost two hours trying to figure this out by giving up sleep (7:46 am here)...

I'm wondering if this was the real reason... any experts don't mind explaining to me?

Thank you so much!

 

In the BIOS, is USB device set to a higher priority than internal HDD? If it is, the machine will check those devices that are hooked up, before it boots from the HDD.

That's about the simplest thing I can think of to check. Usually, you hit F2 or Esc or some other key to access those settings in the BIOS.

 

Booting up with an external HD, printer and DVD player requires Windows to recognize more devices at startup. Usually these settings are cached by device manager though.

All this is speculative since we have no idea what kind of "tweaks" and "changes" you've made the the underlyings of Windows.

 

Yes.. the less the devices, the faster it boots. That's why netbook can boot windows 7 very fast. E.g. 20 seconds~ from pressing the power button to webpage loading.