Sudden increase in boot time

[IHipschman]

I have a GA-Z87X-UD3H motherboard running Windows 8.1, 64 bit. The machine is a few months old. It has been booting up normally until a couple of days ago when it suddenly started taking 7 minutes to boot. After it boots it runs normally.

After failing to find any Windows problems I restored an image copy of the operating system from before the problem began and the long boot time was unchanged, which tells me this is a hardward problem. Unplugging all external peripherals except keyboard, mouse, network and speakers made no difference, which seems to make the motherboard the most likely suspect. Will flashing the bios solve this? Any other suggestions? Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Ivan

[autotech]

There was another post a few days ago that had the same problem and flashing his bios to the latest level fixed it.


http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,14832.0.html

[IHipschman]

I looked at the link you send and it doesn't look like the same problem. Was I looking at the right post? It looked like his problem involved an error code (beep) and complete failure to boot. My PC does boot successfully, but it spends 7 minutes on the Windows LOGO screen before it brings up the User Sign-on screen. The documentation emphasizes that there is some danger to flashing the BIOS so I want to be sure that it has a chance of fixing this before I do it.

Thanks,
Ivan

[autotech]

get a USB drive and download the bios to desktop. Then format USB in FAT32 and unzip bios to the USB.  When you start your computer hit the end key.  It will ask you to update bios from drive say yes and go to the drive and pick bios update.  Do not turn off power to computer and let it go all the way thru. It will restart and off you go hit optimized defaults and load windows see if it makes a difference.

Isn't as hard as you think. I do it all the time.

[IHipschman]

Sorry for the ignorance, but it may not be quite so easy for an amateur. I logged on to the Gigabyte US site and saw the following list of files to update the BIOS:

Version:F10b, Date:2014/06/12, Beta BIOS, Enhanced Intel K-sku CPU performance

Version:F9, Date: 2014/03/19, Improve overclocking capability, (Note) Please use the efiflash.exe included in the zip file to update this BIOS.

Version:F8, Date:2014/01/24, Support New 4th Generation Intel Core Processors

Version:F7, Date:2013/08/05, Support PCB ver 1.0/1.1, Improve PCIE-E compatibility
(Note) The USB driver must be updated in advanced.

I figured I would use Version F8 since I am not overclocking and probably should avoid a beta version. The version F8 file I downloaded was a zip exe containing 3 files: autoexec.bat, Efiflash.exe and Z87XUD3H.F8. The web page did not say to use Efiflash.exe for this version but it was included as part of the download. If I am supposed to use it there are no instructions for using that program.

I really don't want to mess this up. Is this the right version to use and how do I do the update (Q-Flash or Efiflash.exe)? If Efiflash.exe, where are the instructions for using that program?

Thanks again for your patience,
Ivan

[absic]

For BIOS flashing using the QFlash Utility check the FAQ here: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2441.0.html

Further along in this thread I have posted instructions on how to use the EFIFlash tool: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2441.msg89013.html#msg89013 just in case you decide you want to go down that route.

Flashing to a beta BIOS is not a major problem and can often help resolve issues prior to a final BIOS being released. I often use beta BIOS versions and am currently doing so with my GA-Z97X-UD5H without any problems.

[IHipschman]

I updated the BIOS from F7 to F8 using QFLASH. I really appreciate your help in doing that. But it didn't solve the problem - it still spends 7 minutes on the Windows LOGO screen before putting up the user sign-on screen. This started suddenly about a week ago and restoring a version of the OS (System Reserved and C: partitions) from a disk image taken before the problem started did not help, so the problem can't be software. I've unplugged all external periferals except keyboard, mouse and speakers, run a memory checker and flashed the BIOS. Can you suggest anything that may be causing this?

Thanks,
Ivan