Vista 64 on Intel Bad Axe 2 ... 3.5 minute boot

[slappynutz]

Hey all, would appreciate any help someone can give. Didn't know if this was more suited for the Operating System forum or the Motherboard forum.

Here's my dilemma. Yesterday I put together a major upgrade to my system. Went up to the following:

Intel Bad Axe 2 MB
2GB OCZ Platinum Rev 2 DDR2 Ram
Intel E6600
Ninja Stealth Heatsink
eVGA Nvidia 8800GTX
Corsair 620W PS
WD Raptor 74GB Drive

along with some other assorted odds and ends.

When I first booted and installed Vista Enterprise 64, everything was fine. However, when I now boot my system the Bios seems to stall for a long time before displaying the Intel Splash screen (about a minute) and I can hear the Raptor HDD seeking constantly. It then takes Vista 64 about 2.5 minutes to finally boot, with the system stalling on a black screen for a very long time, with no HDD activity at all.

I've tried resetting all Bios settings, but nothing I do can speed the boot time. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

[slappynutz]

Wouldn't you know that after hours of mucking about, 5 minutes after posting the above plea for help I'd discover the real problem.

Seems the correct forum wasn't Operating Systems OR Motherboards. The culprit was the Dell 2407FPW monitor, specifically its integrated USB hub. For some reason the entire system dragged, during BIOS checks and Vista loading, if the Monitor Hub/Card Reader was plugged in.

Wasn't a problem with my old Athlon 64 system, but apparently there's some bad blood between the Dell 2407 and the Intel Bad Axe 2.

Sorry for cluttering the forum.

[feanor1024]

Sorry for cluttering the forum.
It's great that you posted the solution so people who run across the same thing can search and find it.

[zipdrive]

same thing happened to me, except mine was an extenalusb card reader. When I unplugged it, all was right again.

[slappynutz]

After getting home from work and tracking down a weird electrical buzzing sound on my desk (the Xbox 360 Quick Charge base makes noise if it's not charging), I gave the 2407 USB hub / card reader another go. Plugged it into the USB port that takes up a PCI slot instead of the 4-port hub that's directly attached to the Bad Axe 2 ... worked like a charm.

Seems the Dell Monitor hub doesn't like being connected to the 4-port block, or it's conflicting with something in that hub. When it gets its own direct connection it's fine. Good times.

[Grentz]

USB devices can be really really weird at times.

My first step when diagnosing problems like that is always to unplug the USB devices on a system. It seems some devices just do not like to play nice :eek: