Was your BIOS set for AHCI mode before installing the OS on the SSD? If not, you will not experience hardly any noticeable speed increases. I had the same issue when I went to SSD, did not know about the AHCI mode thing. A friend of mine fixed my AHCI issue (don't ask me how), and I got significant more speed.

I just rebooted and checked. Yep, it's in AHCI mode. Still took close to 2 minutes to boot. 

I have a feeling it may be something more than the AHCI setting.  I recall with one of my earlier SSDs that it was how the OS was installed.  The first attempt was via cloning from the HDD and the speeds were down, but when I did a clean install the speeds picked up noticably, with boots of around 25 - 30 seconds.  Give that a try and see how it goes.

This is a clean install Starkers. Right from the Windows 7 DVD. And all the current drivers installed. The machine is 5 years old. That might be it. 

The issue is that its a brand new SSD with a new Windows 7 Pro install and drivers updated. Beats me. I have no clue. At least it's not vibrating my desk like the HDD did. All I care about. 

I might be overreacting. Actually did a stopwatch on the system, 24 seconds from hitting the power switch to when the password dialog and chime are presented and heard, after password entry 4 seconds to a fully usable desktop with wifi connected and all startup programs loaded. 

Those are great boot times, I think you're all set.

I have a SanDisk SSD PLUS 240GB for my Windows 7 OS and my boot time is 37 seconds so I think you are doing pretty good.

A clean install is definitely the best way to go, but the machine being 5 years old should not make a difference if all components are working as they should.  Mind you, I've not heard of Mushkin Source SSDs before.  Is it a US brand or Chinese, etc?

Those are quite good times, Kona, better than the current ones on my AMD big beastie, in fact.  I'm getting between 30 to 40 seconds to boot it to a working desktop, depending on whether there are active external drives connected, usually the longer time if there are, but then I do have a fair few startup programs loaded as well.

I could shorten those times if I were to unload some of the startup programs, but then I'd have to load them manually later, so I leave them as they are.  I could also shorten boot times by removing the full logo and other pages in the BIOS, but then it makes entering the BIOS more difficult when pressing 'Delete' 

Ah what the heck, 30 to 40 seconds isn't bad.  I'll just leave it.

Errr... have you already tried benchmarking the thing from within Windows? Just download and run CrystalDiskMark or AS SSD Benchmark, then compare your results to others out there.

Also, what gen SATA port is the SSD connected to? Is it SATA Gen III (6Gb/s)?

According to CrystalDiskMark the SSD is doing 280 MB per second read, 260 MB per second write. I believe it's plugged into a SATA 2 port, this board is too old to do SATA 3. 

Well, that's probably your problem right there. SATA 2 can only reach a theoretical maximum of 300 MB/s, while SATA 3 can reach up to 600 MB/s.

On a SATA 3 port the 256GB Mushkin Source SSD would/should be able to reach 560 MB/s sequential read and 515 MB/s sequential write.

Despite this and disregarding the Windows load times (a lot of time is spent scanning and initializing devices, besides actually loading stuff) you should feel that in use your system is a lot more responsive now. One of the MAJOR advantages of SSDs over HDDs is that it has no mechanical heads that need to be physically moved to a specific position on the hard disk. Random access times with an SSD are thus an order of magnitude faster.

Ok, but now let me show you what a *real* SSD looks like:  

Don't feel bad though, this is an Intel 905p 960GB NVMe Optane.