Slow Motion Dual-Boot Menu W8 / W7

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I’m running across something I’ve never seen before in all my years setting up dual-boot computers. I’ve posted the info in the Lenovo forum but have had no feedback at all.

I recently purchased 2 Lenovo IdeaCentre K410 refurbs from Lenovo, great computers. They came with Windows 8 with the intention to also install Windows 7.

I’ve installed W7 on both computers but have the weirdest Boot Menu display…the text-based Boot Menu is displayed, not as a full screen where you select the OS or options you want but is displayed 1 character at a time as if you were watching someone type it! It takes about 30-40 seconds to complete the menu where you would select the OS but the 30 second timer runs out and before you can select the other OS it boots to the first one listed. I’ve changed the default 30-second timeout to 120 seconds so it’s now usable but I don’t have a CLUE why it’s ‘typing’ out 1 character at a time. This has happened on both computers.

The boot into W7 is also very slow starting, takes about 40 seconds for the Boot Menu to complete displaying and then after pressing Enter, 70 seconds with no disk activity for the Microsoft Corporation text to appear at the bottom of the screen, then another 15 seconds with no disk activity before Starting Windows appears and another 60 seconds for the juggling balls to start their animation. The Desktop is available in another 30 seconds (no login/pw required yet).

Windows 8 boots from the Boot Menu start in about 60 seconds to the W8 Start screen.

At one point as I keep trying different things in BIOS I selected the F8 key once to boot into Safe Mode to see if anything would change. That was a mistake; as you know in Safe Mode each driver is listed in text mode as it’s loaded. When you get to the bottom of the screen the screen scrolls up and the next driver is loaded. On this machine it again types each line of text as each driver loads. When it’s time to scroll the screen up it ‘retypes’ each line again before it gets to the ‘next’ driver. It took about 1.5 hours to boot into Safe Mode as the computer continued to type everything out. Safe Mode looked fine, didn’t see anything and it continues to perform this ‘slow motion’ dual-boot every time.

This is a UEFI-enabled BIOS, don’t know if that has anything to do with it, had a heck of a time figuring out how to set it up so I could boot the W7 DVD.

Color me confused and baffled, have not been able to find anything on the Web remotely describing this anomaly.

Any thoughts appreciated, thanks,

Jim

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Since you installed Windows 7 second, you’re seeing the Windows 7 boot loader instead of the Windows 8 boot loader. I have no real idea about the slowness or other behavior. Probably the easiest solution would be to download and install EasyBCD, and use that to configure your startup.

Be mindful of that download. You’ll have additional stuff (toolbars, etc.) offered, so be slow and careful during the installation, and untick any offer that you don’t want.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Thank you for the quick reply SM, should have mentioned I’ve already attempted to ‘fix’ the strange issue with EasyBCD to no avail. I also appreciate the advice to watch out for ‘additional’ installs, it seems there’s no free software you download/install today that doesn’t have some baggage attached to it

Jim

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If you have Windows 8 install media, you can boot that and do a Startup Repair.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Thanks again SM, I don’t have the media but was able to get into the recovery options and did perform the Startup Repair, didn’t find anything.

I’ve double-checked it with EasyBCD again and removed 2 extraneous entries from the Boot Menu, no change; one pointed to the hard drive and the other pointed to the DVD drive. In the View Settings page it shows:

Windows 7 is the Default
Entry #1 is Windows 7 – Drive C
Entry #2 is Windows 8 – Drive D

It really is strange, everything works just fine with W8 / W7 once beyond the command text-based Boot Menu, very annoying. I have one of the computers installed in a client location, just told them to keep it powered on until I come up with a fix.

Coincidentally, I’ve installed W7 on 2 other Lenovo products this past month, the G500 laptop, and neither of them had any problems with the install or the Boot Menu, it just pops into place as one would expect.

Jim

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Can you post a screen shot of Disk Management?

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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I’ve uploaded the W8 and W7 view of Disk Management, thanks.

Jim

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I’ve uploaded the W8 and W7 view of Disk Management, thanks.

Jim,

Hello… I’m confused… One screen shot shows that you have a GPT HD, and your Win 7 OS shows a “boot” page file , etc.. Thought that a GPT HD handles the Boot chores utilizing the two small partitions?:cheers: Regards Fred

PS: Think that only 64 bit ( Win 7 ) can use GPT…

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Did you disable Fast Startup in Windows 8 before you installed Windows 7?

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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I can’t say for sure that I did but it’s usually one of the first things I do, the one computer I have here does have it turned off, thanks.

Jim

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Hello JPF, I’m afraid your information is a little over my head; I am a techie but never got into the ‘nitty gritty’ of disk management, everything I’ve done over the years just seemed to work. The exception to that was when I started adding W7 to W8 computers recently and ‘discovered’ UEFI and security in the W8, 64-bit environment, wish I had a ‘decoder ring’ .

I happen to have another Lenovo computer (G500 laptop) here I’ve just updated to W7 to dual-boot with the native W8 and the Disk Management shows identical descriptions for the HD and W8 and W7 partitions as the images above, at least on the W8 side, will boot W7 and look at them also. It has no problems with the command/DOS-based dual-boot menu. Too bad the BIOS/Setup menus are different, it would be nice to make them the same if they were.

Jim

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Your disk management screenshots look normal. Windows 7 64-bit installation will recognize a GPT environment and install without difficulty. In UEFI/GPT both Windows 7 and Windows 8 boot from the EFI System partition, where the bootmgr.efi calls WindowsSystem32Winload.exe from the appropriate partition.

In the Disk Management view in a dual boot setup, the system that has been booted shows its partition as boot, page file, etc. and the booted partition (almost) always assumes the C: drive letter.

I think your PC is using the Windows 7 bootmgr. Try this (it is the command line switch to have the boot menu displayed in text instead of GUI in Windows 8):

In an Administrators level Command Prompt type the command “bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy” (without the quotes)

If it’s the Windows 7 bootmgr, you’ll get an error message,

“The element data type specified is not recognized, or does not apply to the specified entry.
Run “bcdedit /?” for command line assistance.
Element not found.”

and that’s all. If, on the other hand it’s the Windows 8 bootmgr, you’ll get

“The operation completed successfully.”

That will tell us for sure which bootmgr is being used, and shouldn’t have any negative impact on your BCD store.

The command line for GUI menu is “bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy standard” (without the quotes, and it only works in Windows 8 bootmgr).

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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I executed that command in W8, ran successfully but it made no difference.

I then ran it in W7, failed as you indicated.

Nothing has changed.

Once again I double-checked the EasyBCD configurations between the 2 Lenovo computers and they’re functionally similar.

Jim

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I then ran it in W7, failed as you indicated.

Jim,
Hello… Unless i missed it ..are you running Win 7 64 ? or the 32 bit OS ?….My screen shot shows that there is no boot support for the 32 bit Win 7 with GPT…. Regards Fred

PS: Here is a screen shot of my GPT HD … Win 7 64 OS

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It’s the 64-bit version (Home Premium), don’t think the 32-bit version would work as it’s not UEFI-aware.

Jim

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