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Large Pre-Windows XP Boot Pause :(

U

uRizen

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 30, 2002
Messages
388
I just but a brand new Seagate 200gb Barracuda in my system and now there's this 30 second pause between the plug and play boot screen and the Windows XP loading screen.

I've removed the drive and it goes away. All my pinnings and cables are perfect, and I've updated all my drivers and the BIOS. I've also disabled the on-board SATA controller in hopes it was the problem.

Inside of Windows, the drive works beautifully and hasn't given me any errors at all. I've run extensive HDD benchmarks and tests to make sure and still get no problems.

It's bugging the crap out of me at this point, anyone have any good ideas? :D

Here's what's sitting in there right now:

AthlonXP 2500+
Abit NF7-s Rev2
2x256mb HyperX PC3500
Radeon 9800 Pro
Antec 430w Trupower PSU

IDE Channel 0: 80gb WD SE (Master) & 200gb Seagate Barracuda (Slaved)
IDE Channel 1: Pioneer DVDROM (Master) & Yamaha CDRW-F1 (Slaved)

Thanks!
 
Originally posted by RROMAN
Exact problem when I recently installed a second HDD, a Seagate 80 Gig. :(
Click to expand...

I wonder if it's a Seagate thing. I ran the utilities that came with it and none of the diagnostics showed any problems.
 
I'm just posting this cause a similar problem happened with my Western Digital 120 gig Special Edition drive... I had a maxtor and it booted fine, but when I formatted this drive, there was a huge pause before it would even load XP. Turns out I selected the "quick format NTFS" instead of the full on a new drive. After I reformatted, it was more like 5 seconds. Hope any of this can help anyone.
 
i dont like how its called "Quick Format" when it does not actually formant the Hard Drive
it just does what the recycle bin does and it doesnt delete everything :mad:
 
Originally posted by ST|FFY
i dont like how its called "Quick Format" when it does not actually formant the Hard Drive
it just does what the recycle bin does and it doesnt delete everything :mad:
Click to expand...
So then you also don't like the idea of Quick Erases of cd-rw discs?
All a Quick Format does is erase the table of contents. MS's format of a drive "erases" the data on the partition. Low Level formatting is like the nuclear bomb of formatting...everything is gone.
You and I, and I hope a lot others who read these forums, know that a quick format doesn't totally erase the data...just dereferences them; however the average joe will not need to know the difference.
 
In my one experience with a 200GB drive, all my problems went away when I set it to Cable Select. Weird, but true.
 
its probably the BIOS, its scanning the IDE\PCI bus for a bootable drive and redetecting all the drives (along with any attached peripherals) Try setting the boot order manually and disabling booting to other devices, also under the PNP\PCI submenu see if there is an option to force update ESCD (extended system configuration data) Ideally you want your boot HDD as master on the primary IDE Channel as its the first one scanned, and is listed as HDD 0 in the boot order if its in that position.

As mentioned Cable Select automatically IDs the components master slave status and can make the idetification faster, but its even faster if the information is just saved in the EPPROM (CMOS\BIOS) and active scanning isnt even done.

BIOS System Boot Operations
 
Just this evening, I solved a problem with a computer I was building for my brother. It's got Raid 1 with 2 identical 80GB WD drives. Anyway, I kept having issues with one or the other drive not showing up, or various other errors, not to mention very long Windows XP/boot load times. Finally, I took a second look at the HDD jumpers, and saw that I accidentally set them to "Master w/ Slave" instead of "Master". I fixed that, and all those wacky problems went away. Works beautifully and boots very quickly now.
 
Have you tried to disable all the unused channels from your IDE controller in windows? I have my primary slave and secondary slave device type changed to 'none' in windows device manager since I have no drive connected to them.
hth, good luck!
 
The pause is most likely a jumper setting. If it's set on master or slave, switch to cable select, or vice versa. I had the same problem when I had a WD and Maxtor drive on the same channel, in a master/slave config. Once I put them on CS the problem immediatly went away.
 
Thanks for the help so far guys. I've switched them to cable select, and reformatted all the drives the long hard way and reinstalled... the problem still persists. I'm going to play with those BIOS settings next time I get the opportunity to restart and let you know how that goes. :D
 
Yay! Thanks for the BIOS tip. I actually had to switch the 200gb drive from Auto block addressing to LBA and now it works perfectly. BIOS screen to login in 13 seconds.

urizen_drives_ok.jpg
 
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