Task Mgr Startup reports average BIOS time 7.5 seconds.

Is that good, bad, or just "meh"? I've always wondered about these reported BIOS times, and the Internet info isn't enlightening. Your input, fellow 11 Forum members, will be, I'm sure. Well, fairly sure.

Dan

Mine shows 9.3 seconds but it hasn't been restarted in more than 8 hours.

Mine report 15.4 seconds, my cpu did not successfully pass the tests to run windows 11.

I would say meh, mine averages 7.5 - 12 on my more powerful Alienware but on my little Surface laptop it's a speedy 2.0 - 3.0

Mine is at 14.3 seconds on a 2.5" SSD (SATA III), with a 5 sec. POST delay set in the BIOS.

8.1 for me here

Wisewiz said:

I've always wondered about these reported BIOS times, and the Internet info isn't enlightening.

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According to Brink's tutorial: The Last BIOS time is the amount of time in seconds it took the UEFI BIOS firmware to identifying and initializing hardware devices and running a power-on self-test (POST) before it begins booting Windows when you power on the computer.

So the time is very much dependent on how much and what sort of hardware your machine has. In particular, the more RAM you have the longer the POST tests will take. My modestly powered System One reports 3.9 seconds, while my 'System Three' (squeezed in at the end of the 'Other info' section) reports 7.2 seconds, despite having a much more powerful 10th gen i7. I put that down to it also having 32GB of RAM to test during POST, as opposed to System One's mere 8GB.

As is often the case, the How-To Geek has a good explanation of what it does.

Bree said:

So the time is very much dependent on how much and what sort of hardware your machine has. In particular, the more RAM you have the longer the POST tests will take. My modestly powered System One reports 3.9 seconds, while my 'System Three' (squeezed in at the end of the 'Other info' section) reports 7.2 seconds, despite having a much more powerful 10th gen i7. I put that down to it also having 32GB of RAM to test during POST, as opposed to System One's mere 8GB.

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I guess that would make sense. I wonder if things like a dedicated GPU, additional hard drives and plugged in USB devices would also effect it?

FrancoDT said:

I wonder if things like a dedicated GPU, additional hard drives and plugged in USB devices would also effect it?

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Yes, it should do. The more hardware there is to initialize, the longer it takes.

The How-To Geek says "On a modern PC, something around three seconds is often normal, and anything less than ten seconds probably isn’t a problem" and if it does take longer, suggests ways to speed it up.

Mine reports 3.8 sec

When I did my last boot, I had my normal hardware plus two external HDDs installed. The BIOS time was 24.2 seconds. The next time I boot my computer I'll check the time without the external drive connected.

You wouldn't believe the hardware I have.....

Fabler2 said:

You wouldn't believe the hardware I have.....

View attachment 23419

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You need to wait until your computer starts before plugging in all your USB drives.

Winuser said:

You need to wait until your computer starts before plugging in all your USB drives.

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It's because of dual booting. Changing the default from one to the other and rebooting causes it.

Fabler2 said:

It's because of dual booting. Changing the default from one to the other and rebooting causes it.

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I hope just in numbers and not actual time. :)

Winuser said:

I hope just in numbers and not actual time. :)

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Yes. It just messes up the result for some reason.

9.3 seconds on a NVMe m.2, with a 5 sec. POST delay set in the BIOS.