Slow bootup

jamest

jamest

jamest

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Joined
30 Sep 2004
Posts
285
Location
England
Hi all,

I've just set up a new computer on an Asus P5Q motherboard and installed Windows XP.

When I turn the computer on, I get the standard ASUS Logo screen, then it goes to a black screen and I just get a flashing cursor for about 30 seconds. Nothing seems to happen. After that I get the XP logo and it loads as normal.

Does anyone know what my computer might be doing for the ~30seconds before the XP screen? Is there something in BIOS I need to turn off?

The OS is installed on a SATA drive, and BIOS is configured to use IDE for SATA mode.

Any help would be great.

Thanks
 
My laptop does that but for about 5 seconds or so, very odd. I would like to know why it does that too.
 
Check your boot order.

Maybe it's looking to bot off the network or something? I just have my hard drive in the boot order, so it doesn't look for CD's or anything.
 
I've just disabled everything apart from the hard drive on my laptop and it still does it for me. I have been googling for quite a while but can only seem to find people with the same problem that cant get winxp to load.
 
Its unrelated for me, the drive is defragged often. Older systems that do not get defragged at all dont have this problem.

The old drive was cloned on to the one I am currently using via acronis. Perhaps I need to do a fixboot or mbr, cba to find a xp CD though as my laptop has a oem XP ;) (This is gonna be my last resort).
 
Definately not trying to boot from network.

Boot order is Hard Drive, CD, Floppy. Don't think you can disable them completely on P5Q.

Definately no probs with defrag.

Just tried disabling all RAID controllers / Drive Xpert etc.

Still no luck. Maybe I'll just have to live with it!
 
Might be worth checking your bios is up to date, also if you have any IDE devices (dvd drive?) make sure they are jumpered correctly. It just may be taking a lot time to detect a master device (on the end of the IDE cable) that could be set to slave.

Also try temporarily disabling any other drives including dvd/cd drives to see if that alters the boot speed.
 
Paradiso said:
Might be worth checking your bios is up to date, also if you have any IDE devices (dvd drive?) make sure they are jumpered correctly. It just may be taking a lot time to detect a master device (on the end of the IDE cable) that could be set to slave.

Also try temporarily disabling any other drives including dvd/cd drives to see if that alters the boot speed.
Click to expand...



I've been having this problem for an age, and I never thought of that. You see, I have a PATA HDD and PATA CD/DVD drive in master, and a SATA HDD in master. I hardly have the PATA HDD plugged in, but when it is, the boot process is much much quicker, as its in Slave. The DVD drive is in Master but I don't think I did anything at all to the jumpers (Probably doesn't have a jumper in it). I will try your solution over the weekend, but I'm sure this will work, thanks.
 
If you have mis-configured IDE drives it will do this. Wrong jumpers, slave settings etc.
External USB devices and eSata drives can cause this too.
 
I haven't changed any hardware apart from the hard drive with my laptop, and this definitely didn't do this before I put the new hard drive in it! I am baffled at what it could be :( Hopefully this is the case with the OP though.

*edit* laptop has a sata hard drive btw. Further more, for me this "flashing cursor" is not on the IDE detecting bit, its after that.
 
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