Long Delay on Startup Manager Screen when booting into Windows 7

[qdin]

Hi,

I’m experiencing a long delay immediately after selecting Windows 7 on my Startup Manager screen. The screen freezes for 1-1.5 minutes (mouse won’t move, arrow keys don’t move the selector) after which everything is blazingly fast (I’m on an SSD). The freeze occurs on the Startup Manager screen itself; not the solid grey or black screens that follow (as I've seen in other similar posts).

The delay also happens if Windows 7 is the default - in this case I start my computer and it freezes for 1-1.5 minutes on the grey startup screen. Seems like there’s some kind of search or check going on in the bootloading phase just before jumping over to Windows 7.

My setup:
- Macbook Pro 13” Mid 2009
- 480GB SSD
- Bootcamp with OS X El Capitan 10.11.1 and Windows 7
- OWC data doubler mod: replaced DVD with previous 750 GB HDD.

Other details:
- Since there’s no DVD I had to install Windows 7 via USB drive.
I followed Kunu’s answer here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5105056?tstart=0
- This worked fine, though I did notice that after step 5, once I put the USB in, I did have to wait a while for the installer to start up. I have a hunch that this delay is caused by the same issue (again, probably something with the bootloader and not the OS itself).

Any suggestions and/or debugging tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Eric

 

[qdin]

So, I think I've solved the problem. It seems I've left out an important detail:

Before installing Windows 7, I disconnected the 2nd hard drive (which sits where the optical drive used to sit).
I did this because this HDD was my previous main drive, and has valid OSX and Windows 7 installations on it and I didn't want any interference with the bootcamp process on my new SSD.

Unfortunately, I never reconnected the 2nd hard drive... until now. Now I experience pretty much no delay after selecting to boot into Windows.

So I guess if nothing is connected to the optical drive slot, the Mac undergoes a delay (perhaps a search or some kind of hardware diagnosis) while trying to boot into a second operating system.

Cheers,
Eric