Thinkpads Forum

I don't know if this should go under Windows 10 or as a general BIOS question or a T6x question, but here it is:

My machine is a T61F with middleton BIOS. It's been booting pretty quickly in Win 7 with my intel SSD. I just upgraded to Windows 10 and noticed that boot times got about 30 seconds longer. Watching it, I find that it's the prewindows environment, the POST that is delaying. I timed it and it sits in the Thinkpad splash screen for 30 seconds before it asks for my power on password, then goes on to boot into Windows quickly.

I had not changed any settings in the BIOS when this started. Pretty sure it was the Win 10 upgrade that triggered it or a conincidence but nothing else was changed when it started.
Nothing is plugged into the USB. I took everything off the boot list except the one SSD just in case it was stuck looking.Nope.
I repaired the MBR, just in case. Nope.
I set it to Diagnostic in the BIOS to see how that goes. It takes the same amount of time in the diagnostics screen as it sits in the Thinkpad screen in Quickboot. So Quickboot is not.

So somehow the upgrade did something to the BIOS? And now it won't POST in Quickboot mode?
Or there's an issue with motherboard serial numbers and it just happens to be the same amount of time?
Or it's the MBR and/or the way Win 10 manages the drive that messes with the BIOS?

Appreciate any insight!

Oh, and if I go into the BIOS and then hit F10, it reboots quickly with the old 3or 4 seconds of thinkpad splash. But only if it's already done the whole POST once and then restarted within the BIOS. that's the only time it posts at old normal speeds. Weird.

Thanks,
Steve

I am not sure if this has anything to do with your issue.

Windows 8 and 10 uses a hybrid shutdown where a normal shutdown is similar to more of a sleep or hibernate than a regular shutdown to shorten boot and shutdown times.

If you have ever attempted to access the BIOS without success with Windows 8 or Windows 10 where F1 does not work to access the BIOS it is because of this hybrid shutdown.

Hold the shift key when shutting down forces a normal shutdown where accessing the BIOS with F! on start now works.

There may be other ways to access the BIOS.

This has been my experience.

Brad

Thanks for the response Brad. Yep, I read about that fast boot feature in 10 but have not activated it. I can go into BIOS with F1 when I boot as usual (apart from sitting on Thinkpad screen for 30 seconds) and am certain that I'm getting a full shutdown.

I must have a rare situation. On the one hand, it's just 30 seconds, but on the other, shame to have an SSD and still have such a long boot do to POST. About the only thing I can think of at this point is to reflash the middleton BIOS. But I get a little nervous about doing that for a lightweight problem.

I've seen this kind of behavior before on my T42s, when I changed motherboards or put in a clone from another similar machine and it sat a long time on the thinkpad screen or on that prompt that appears before moving on. It always sorted itself out with a few restarts though.