Installation and bootup extremely slow

These are my system specs:

Motherboard: Intel DG965RY (latest bios version)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13ghz 2mb L2 Cache
RAM: 2x2gb, 2x1gb DDR2 800mhz (PC6400) memory, totalling 6gb
Video: 256mb MSI NX8600-GTS OC (Nvidia 8600 GTS series)

When installing windows 7, it took about 2 or 3 hours. This was particularly a problem during the 'copying files', 'extracting files', and 'migrating settings' phases. Often times, it would get to about 14%, and stop there for up to 10-20 minutes, with zero progress being made during that time.

On bootup, it gets past the glowing windows logo part pretty quickly, but the 'welcome' screen is even slower than it was in Vista. Once I see my taskbar, it takes forever to actually be able to run anything because it's spending another 2-3 minutes trying to finish loading here. Chuggin' slowly. Once that's finally done, I get decent performance. I don't have anything running at startup other than poweriso, avg, and intel audio studio. The rest are stuff that windows provides automatically. Nothing unusual is running in the task manager process tree, either.

Now, Vista had similar problems when I -freshly- installed it, but not nearly as bad as this. The reason I upgraded instead of fresh installed, is because 64-bit windows installs have a major problem with my hardware. For some reason, 64-bit vista or windows 7 during a fresh install at bootup use up 100% of my CPU even when idle, even after the install is finished, and I must reboot after the slooooooow installation is complete to get normal performance. I'm aware this is a windows 7 board, not a vista board, but the problem persists into 7.

Is my system too weak for 64-bit? Or is this a problem with 64-bit 7 (and vista) with my hardware? Others I spoken to say their installations went smooth and quick, especially in comparison to mine.

The install on win7 is slow, but boot up is insanely fast. 42 seconds to boot screen on my system, and that's after booting RAID arrays, and complete RAM checks. From the Boot screen to a usable desktop its only another 8-10 seconds. Boots to use in under a minute.

You might have some incompatible hardware?

BTW, my win 7 machine specs are going to be in my sig. It is NOT new.

Do you have AHCI enabled? I noticed on my system, Vista and Win7 that the system is really slow to install. I believe this has to do with AHCI and/64bit OS version. I never seem to have issues with my laptop (no achi) and vista/win7 32bit. My lower powered laptop installed 2x as fast as my desktop, which is a far superior machine.

Win7 32bit on my laptop only runs using 680meg of memory, My desktop running 64bit uses 1.12Gig.

I am not so sure that the 32bit is not just quicker...

I'm not sure if I do have that enabled, but my intel motherboard doesn't allow for much flexibility in the BIOS option department, as you may or may not be aware. I would have to look and see next time I try to install windows. It's possible that it may be an option that I can only have enabled.

Check what mode your HDD is running, the wrong mode can be very slow

To be honest fokes, it should not matter what hardware you have in your PC according to what I found last night.

My PC I have is a Q6600, 4GB of g.Skill 800MHz DDR2 ram, 1K Galexy PSU, Asus Maximus Formular MB, 6 x Westal Digital RE Drives in a RAID5.

All in a Coolermaster Stacker STC-T01 case that has too much air cooling as I never get above 27'c.

I was running my Win7 32bit via Virtual PC 2007 SP1 as this I found was the quickest way to do this. Though after 2hrs of the install once it was up and running, (SLOW!!!) playing solitare was not an option... SLOW!!!

There is somthing bad in this build and I am not imprest with the speed at all. What happened the word fast.!!!!

I would still check that MB drivers and Raid drivers are what they should be.
I had problems installing the MB/chipset drivers (Asus P5Q Deluxe), I managed and now it's running fast and smooth. Mind, I still don't have any sound ( Creative E-MU 0404).
I tried Vista 32 bit and got rid of it within a week, Win 7 is different.
I do believe that hardware and drivers are the key points to success, it's early days, give it a chance.
I made a partition on my C drive and installed Win 7 on the new partition, then I can go back and fiddle when I'm in the mood. Beta software is still in-complete software so don't rely on it as a main OS.

You very will might be correct there. As I didn't install any divers.....

Now that I know I need to use the vista drivers I will try this when I get home.

All the same, by now surly MS should have put all of the correct new drivers into the build. Its big enough don't you think Though then again its MS...

Officially, Win7 Beta was released less than a week ago, think about how many different kind of MB/Gr. Cards/ s. cards/etc. there are No way MS have got all the drivers in place, that would be unfair to expect.
It can be frustrating to be on the wagon at such an early stage, take it as a challenge, because, that is what Beta testing is. Don't forget to report back to MS, that's the only way they can know about the problems.
I will suggest that you who are having problems, set the Win7 to as basic as you can , adjust to best performance and forget the fancy stuff until you're up running smoothly, if you're doing all the things in one go, you'll never find the trouble maker

Sorry I totally disagree with you.

MS have more then likely got the email addresses for every major hardware business out there. All they need to do is email the manufactures and ask them for a bundle pack of al the drivers they have and there you go... Not hard

I scouted for drivers for more then 20pc's in my last job and each PC was totally diffrent. It took me 2 days, and that was for 1 person. Think of the potential MS have