Boot into Win PE is extremly slow.

So i fresh installed W11 Pro and erased everything on the pc. After all the updates i installed HBS and created a boot menu. Backed up externaly and restored, same as before, twice and slow. Uinstalled HBS after removing its boot menu and updated all drivers with IObit Driver Booster. About 20 something. Then i installed HBS again and did the same mentioned procedure, same result. Twice and slow.

 

Try creating a usb flash drive (emergency disk) with re-downloaded WinPE files, instead of a boot menu, and see if the issue is still there

 

Interesting.

Well, all this functioned ok when the pc was new, but after a while something happened. And as said, other backup program reacts the same, as they have never done before on my backup pc or others i have owned. It is only on this one.

But that about motherboard driver is what i myself am thinking and are going to pursue now. After that, the driver path will be exhausted.

 

Ok.

Do you know of any good program for finding out what motherboard i have?

 

Yes. CPU-Z and Hwinfo are good free utilities.

 

It is a Lenovo motherboard. And all drivers that one can install for this pc, is on the support site for it. And all those are installed.
But i am going to double check that.

 

I can not judge that since the loading bar does not exist with UFD. It just loads into the recovery environment, and in a normal way. Faster or not i do not know.

 

There is no explicit motherboard item on the support site with drivers. Just the usual for camera, bios, display etc. Is it under chipset?
Anyway, everything that can be downloaded from the site, and with their automatic update program, is installed. So i suppose they update their motherboard as well as all the other drivers.

 

If anything affects that it would be the chipset drivers. If they have old driver sets as well, one thing to try would be a driver set older than when the problem started.

 

They do update ALL drivers with their update program, so all is updated now and still the problem.

If, i say IF, this is a hardware issue, what could it be?

 

I have tried that, but not extensively. The bios then, the pc did not like at all so i had to update immediatly to a later.
But i could try chipset from then, what more?

 

So the Hasleo WinPE from a UFD loaded as it should, quick and fast? Then your issue is not with WinPE, or any other hardware or driver related, but with the way Hasleo's boot menu option works.

I do not use Hasleo so I am not 100% sure but I am guessing when you use the boot menu option, Hasleo loads its own driver first, which either loads a Hasleo WinPE or launches Hasleo directly. It is most likely this driver that is causing the problem not WinPE.

 

With usuall i meant as it usually does with backup programs so not slower or faster. Nothing remarkable. But this problem is with all backup programs, programs that have worked ok with other pc:s over the years. And, as said, in the beginning it was ok. So for you to be right, it has to be a compatibility issue with just this pc. Not only for HBS. Right?

 

OK, I'll try and do a good memory dump on this process. Whenever a System is "clean installed," MicroSloth builds a System BOOT Loader that is located in the EFI System partition in an UEFI System. The BOOT loader is built from components (basic kernel, basic drivers, etc) that are contained in the Windows installation media when the build is done. This is what is used for all image loading, regardless of where it's coming from. If the Windows Installation Media does not contain the hardware's latest drivers (which it never does), it uses some sort of basic driver set to do its stuff.

When OEMs build their Systems, they use an up-to-date Windows Installation Media. When the build is done, they then update their hardware's drivers in the OS (live System only). At this point, to insure their use of the latest driver set when BOOTing, they must now update the System BOOT Loader in the EFI partition. Understand that when you update drivers in the LIVE OS, there is no automatic updating of the System BOOT loader at that time... this is something that needs to be done manually if you wish to include all the new drivers.

Based on that, after each clean install of Windows, you'll only have what Windows knows for your drivers unless you manually update your System BOOT Loader after you've updated your LIVE System drivers. Most of the time if the System BOOT Loader is not manually updated by the user, the System continues to function in all ways, although not necessarily in an optimum way.

So let's say that your clean installs put back the Windows System Loader with not so optimum driver files... after that build, that's the way they will be until the System BOOT Loader has been rebuilt by the user. This may be part, if not all, of your issue. Possibly you did a clean install at that 1-1/2 yr point in the System's life and the not so optimum drivers are still in that System BOOT Loader.

A suggestion... I will provide a LINK below (from the Tom's Hardware Site <clearest one I found>) showing how to update your System BOOT Loader in that EFI partition. It's tricky but if your careful, all will be fine. Worst case... another clean install . BUT... you need to be sure that the driver set currently running on your LIVE System is in place... that's what will be used during the rebuild of the System BOOT Loader. No guarantees here so it's just another direction to look into.

Here's the link to the Tom's Hardware site where the System BOOT Loader instructions are offered. The process attempts to use Method 01 which invokes the Windows AUTOMATIC System Repair function... for non-optimum driver issues this step will find no solutions... it only works well for broken BOOT paths. Method 02 will force the full restructuring of the BOOT loader, including the needed drivers which hopefully you now have resident in your LIVE OS.

Good luck... and be careful

 

Remember... it's the System BOOT Loader that actually loads the WinPE image, that's the slow part of the process you're describing. Once the WinPE image is loaded and started (in RAM via WinPEinit), the Windows image in the WinPE will be invoked and things should be reasonably normal after that. Those images, usually built by the application that's using them in an off-line mode, are built with LIVE System drivers available at the time of the build.... the same as the rebuild procedure described above will do.

 

Thank you!
Gone try this method 2.

 

This is what i did. Executed the guide, method #2. Uninstalled the HBS boot menu and then the program itself. Reinstalled HBS and created a boot menu. Did an external backup and restored it a bit later. No change.

This was on a Os that was fresh installed with all updates and, drivers updated, as mentioned before, with IObit Driver Booster.

 

Going to try backup/restore again tomorrow with Aomei backuper to see how that program reacts to the updated loader. It also load files like HBS and has also been a problem.

 

As asked above, I would still like to get the Make'n'Model of that laptop you're having trouble with...

 

Make`n`Model?
If you mean pc model, see post #17.

 

@TheRollbackFrog
@Raza0007

I thinking of trying W10 and see what happens. It came without an Os, i installed W11.

 

@pb1 - have you crawled around in the ADVANCED BIOS settings of the laptop? I can't find any direct documentation but there are a lot of extra settings in that area.

 

I do not recommend going back to Windows 10 because according to Lenovo's website your PC was designed for Windows 11

From the posts above it appears that you only encounter this slow loading of WinPE environment issue when you use Haselo's and Aomei's "boot menu" option. You do not encounter any issues when using Hasleo's UFD based external recovery media. I am assuming the same will be true for Aomei.

I understand that using the boot menu option is more convenient, and if you prefer it, then I recommend not using Hasleo's for creating a boot entry, but create a boot menu entry using EasyBCD and Hasleo's recovery .wim file. This is what I use with Macrium Reflect and it works flawlessly.

I will post the instructions for creating a Hasleo recovery boot menu entry using EasyBCD in a separate post.

 

@TheRollbackFrog
@Raza0007

I am now running W10 and it works beautifully. The loading of WinPE when restoring is so fast that if i blink, i will miss it. And only once. So on W10, it works. Pity i do not want to run W10.

I have thought about EasyBCD but i do not think it is as simple, if i remember correctly, as when restoring with HBS. Simplicity is speed, and that is what i want, with HBS.

Maybe i should read the documentation, i have not due to the fact that it is not much to chose in bios that can affect this. And that which exists, i have tried. And then some.

So now the question is, why does it work on W10 but not on W11? One thing about this installation, when done, a lot of drivers where missing, a lot. I had to do them with IObit Driver Booster. 20-25 of them.

 

Good to know that the issue is gone with Windows 10, I am not sure why that would be. I am guessing you were on the latest Windows 11 24H2 before? If not, then upgrading to 24H2 would have been my first choice since Windows 10 is about to lose support after October 2025.

In any case, here are the instructions for creating a Hasleo recovery boot menu entry using EasyBCD. This will work with any utility that has a WinPE based recovery environment.

Before you start with this please remove any existing boot menu entry and restart your PC. All you need is EasyBCD and the contents of the Hasleo emergency disk that you made earlier on a UFD. Just copy the contents to your internal HDD, preferably on a drive or partition other than your system drive C. What you actually need is the "boot.wim" file usually found inside the "sources" folder in the recovery media.

After this just follow the step-by-step instructions from the following post I wrote way back when. I have been using this method with all my WinPE based recovery medias since 2010 without any issues. You do not need to check the "skip the boot menu" in step 2. I usually keep it with a 2 sec delay, so I can boot into the recovery media on first startup.

Tutorial - Booting into a WinPE recovery environment without using a bootable media