I installed the OS to my SSD via the recovery disks i made using AI recovery burner. but the problem didn't just start on the SSD it was on the original HDD as well. i got irritated with the loading times and figured a SSD would do the trick. seems i was wrong. but i'm running windows 7

Hi,

Does it hang every cold boot and can you try tapping 'F8' (as soon as you power on or even start tapping before you power on to catch it) to select Safe Mode for Win7 and confirm you never have a problem booting this way?

Have you updated the vga driver or can you please confirm the version?

Sorry, I'm not the best with software, so hopefully others have better suggestions if necessary.

Yes it does hang on every cold boot. right after the windows boot animation. and now it seems its wanting to hang every time windows is shutting down (both normal shutdown and even clicking restart). Safemode loads up fine, there is no hanging on any of the files when starting. And as for the vga driver. isn't that just a video output? i don't see how it could effect it but ill get the driver version if you can tell me where to find it. I'm not seeing it in device manager. But if you're referring to my graphics driver then i'm on version 327.23

I found something that i think may be the problem. i enabled bootlogging and after looking at the log i found the following cluster of lines that repeats over 40 times in the ntbtlog file

Did not load driver @oem13.inf,%nvidia_dev.1251.02%;NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M
Did not load driver @battery.inf,%acpi\acpi0003.devicedesc%;Microsoft AC Adapter
Did not load driver @battery.inf,%acpi\pnp0c0a.devicedesc%;Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery
Did not load driver @cpu.inf,%intelppm.devicedesc%;Intel Processor
Did not load driver @cpu.inf,%intelppm.devicedesc%;Intel Processor
Did not load driver @cpu.inf,%intelppm.devicedesc%;Intel Processor
Did not load driver @cpu.inf,%intelppm.devicedesc%;Intel Processor
Did not load driver @cpu.inf,%intelppm.devicedesc%;Intel Processor
Did not load driver @cpu.inf,%intelppm.devicedesc%;Intel Processor
Did not load driver @cpu.inf,%intelppm.devicedesc%;Intel Processor
Did not load driver @cpu.inf,%intelppm.devicedesc%;Intel Processor
Did not load driver @battery.inf,%*compbatt.devicedesc%;Microsoft Composite Battery

i'm going to take a random guess and say this is my issue?
here's the link to view the entire log https://www.dropbox.com/s/d83l1z0ajw0ipc0/ntbtlog.txt

Well, if safe mode works fine, it's likely some kind of software issue.

Sorry, yes, I was talking about the graphics driver and you will sometimes hear other customers report issues when they don't use the ASUS approved drivers although not always.
Anyway, not sure if this is really causing the problem, but the latest ASUS approved G74SX Win7 64-bit graphics driver posted on the ASUS download site here is version V9.18.13.1100.02 (3.11 ?) if you want to try downgrading to it.
I'm a bit of a worrier and would suggest backing up first just in case, but you may want to try to get other suggestions first.

Honestly, I don't usually check the boot logs to know much about it, but seems like it might be getting stuck on the nVIdia graphics driver although there are other drivers not loaded too. You may want to try to get more opinions about it from others who may know more about it.

Alternatively, if you still have the other hard drive that you don't mind erasing, you may want to reinstall Windows using your AI Recovery disks just to confirm it boots and shuts down with no problem before you install anything else.

Not sure if everything was okay when you first installed your SSD drive and the problem started after installing software or updates, but you may want to check or ask around more if you don't want to go through my 'brute-force' approach which will probably be more painful if you have things you want to keep.

Windows System Restore is one last idea before you erase everything although you will lose changes after the restore date you go back to (so back up if necessary?).

If there is a painless way, we should try to confirm everything works with a fresh install or things were working in the beginning before trying to change things.

I will be receiving a new SSD soon so ill just check my boot times and logs after installing windows onto it. when it comes to loosing data it doesn't worry me too much. i don't have anything important on my primary drive so ill go ahead and downgrade my driver

btw i have to thank you for your help. i wasn't really expecting this much support from a forum 😛 good to know asus and rog both have a friendly community!

Ah, if you get a new SSD, try to confirm everything is normal after you reinstall Windows using the AI Recovery disks and before you install any other software.

If you don't need to have the latest (ASUS unapproved) graphics driver, you may want to avoid it, otherwise, you might try installing it first just to confirm it's causing the problem and hopefully you can find a newer or older version that works better.
If you plan to downgrade your vga driver with your current hard drive though, you will probably have some idea what will happen with your new hard drive.

Also, if you didn't already know, we recommend staying away from any optional driver updates from Microsoft (or other sources) that are for your notebook drivers like vga, audio, LAN, etc. whenever possible and stick to the ASUS download site instead for those, but you still want to install any critical or important updates for Windows itself, of course.

Honestly, it can be hit or miss on the forums depending on the question and availability of everybody, but hopefully the information was useful.

You can also reach U.S. ASUS Support at this page here which includes a chat option if you are ever interested, but feel free to stick around these forums too!

i believe i have located the problem and it seems very common but there's not a definitive answer on how to fix it. Looking through Event Viewer i found this error for SMSSInit

Session manager initialization caused a slow down in the startup process:
Name : SMSSInit
Total Time : 71770ms
Degradation Time : 67015ms
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2013‎-‎10‎-‎01T23:04:12.656000200Z