PC Building

[BigAl01]

Yesterday I decided to make a few changes to the settings in my main machine's motherboard  BIOS.  Wine-Time has been stable ever since I built it, but you know how alluring the ability to tweak things can be.  I was hoping to shorten the boot up time, since it's always taken a few minutes to boot.  I changed the 'Memory Context Restore' from 'Auto' to 'Enabled'.  I think that's all I did and it seemed to boot up ok.  When I turned it on later, no dice.  I would boot into Windows and it would lock up.  I tried to reset that 'Memory Context Restore' back to 'Auto' this morning and it wouldn't save it.  The BIOS would lock up.  I also noticed that my 7900X was running at around 5.5 GHz and this is a 4.7 GHz CPU, but I couldn't figure out how to stop that overclocking either.  Besides, every time I booted it up into the BIOS, I couldn't get the changes to get saved.

Being an experienced computer builder, I didn't panic though.  This afternoon I pulled the machine out of it's cubby and pulled the power plug to the PSU.  Then I popped the CMOS battery out and reinstalled it a few minutes later.  I booted up again and the CMOS was back to default settings!  I let it boot up to make sure Windows would load with no issues, and then I went back and tweaked my memory to EXPO and the DDR5 frequency to 6000.  I left 'Memory Context Restore' at the default 'Auto' setting.  I don't want any more memory lockup conditions!

Lesson learned today: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[johnnyenglish]

I have BSODs with that too.

I have mine at Disabled, not even AUTO. Since its only 32gb my boot time is pretty ok. Under 20secs.

To have the Memory Context Restore enabled I need Memory Power Down enabled as well. Boots up in under 8secs, super fast till Windows but I lose some performance doing this.

Under 20secs is fine, rock solid with 32gb 6000 now tweaked at cl30.

[FunkZ]

I never understood DDR5 memory training?

Either the EXPO/XMP settings work or they don't, why does the memory require training?

I just timed my AM4/DDR4 boot time and it's 19 seconds from BIOS splash screen to Windows desktop, and that's on a Windows 10 install from 2018 that has been through several hardware upgrades!

[BigAl01]

There must be more information on this somewhere.  This computer has maybe a 45 to 60 second boot time, while some of my AM5 systems will boot in 10 seconds.

[mengelag]

If I don't have Memory Context restore enabled my boot time is like 4-5 minutes. Insanity!

[BigAl01]

Now that's a long boot time.  There is something to be said for the AM4 Ryzen 5000 series!

[cpurpe91]

I have only taken about a minute and a half to boot with Memory Context Restore off. With it on it is nearly instant. My AM4 system still beats it sometimes though.

[elstaci]

In my case using a AM4 with a 3700X with 32 GB of RAM (3600 Mhz) using a Windows 10/11 installed on a  Black Western Digital HDD it took about 15 minutes or longer to completely boot into Windows Desktop due to so many 3rd party Start Up programs I have installed.

Then I decided to install a SATA Samsung one TB SSD and now it boots up into Windows Desktop in less than 10 seconds.

So with your M.2 NVME SSD's  and 64 GB of RAM, I am surprised it takes so long to boot into Windows without having to tweak BIOS settings.

But since tweaking BIOS has a huge difference in boot times seems to indicate an issue with BIOS and possibly your RAM. 

[BigAl01]

You might be right about that, but it boots successfully in about two minutes.  I have two other AM5 builds that boot in half that time, but still not as fast as my AM4 builds.  Being retired though, I can wait for a computer to boot.  They all work just fine once Windows 11 starts up.

Perhaps I should look for a BIOS update.  There is something funky about this one.

[Dragokar]

Out of curiosity, is it an MSI build?

[BigAl01]

Yes it is.  I was having one problem with it before tweaking the memory settings - it didn't like to restart after a Windows Update.  It would get halfway there and keep the fans spinning, but it didn't start up the BIOS again.  I would have to power it off and then on again to continue the Windows Update.  Now that I cleared the CMOS, it does reboot normally.  That's a good result for me.

Some of my components.

[Dragokar · Accepted solution]

Sounds good. Though I´ve read many comments about in which order you have to save settings in MSI UEFI in regard to memory context restore and power down enable. Basically you have to do it one by one with save and reboot after every step.........but I am glad that it is working after the clear cmos!

[BigAl01]

I didn't know about that.  In any case, my BIOS is over a year old and I just downloaded the latest release (Aug 2024) that supports the 9000 series.  Now I just need to get my courage up to flash the BIOS and then tweak it again.  I guess I should only do one setting at a time.

[Dragokar]

the force is with you 😉

[BigAl01]

I know I should do it, but I am hesitant.  My system is stable right now.  We'll see.  

[BigAl01]

Ok, I got it done.  I was having shutdown issues again over the weekend, where the computer wouldn't completely shut down until I powered it off.  So I updated the BIOS to the latest version and after one successful boot into Windows (I had to reset my PIN too; thanks Microsoft.), I got into the new BIOS and made all the changes at once:  disabled internal graphics, set the memory to EXPO 1 for DDR5 6000, checked RE-BAR (already enabled by default), but I left the Memory Context Restore to 'auto'.  My boot time is now 70 seconds and I can live with that.

Always a concerning time when updating the BIOS.....

[Dragokar]

You still can enable memory context restore if the boot times are too long for you.

[mengelag]

For me to achieve the lowest temps I could with my limited knowledge, I had to save my settings one at a time also or it would boot loop, or the Expo on the memory would revert to default speeds. I had to put Eco mode on first with Ryzen Master then save, then do the negative curve optimizer to -30 and save, then finally turn on Expo 1 to get the 6000mhz speed of the RAM. Also between each save it did memory retraining which was annoying..