Ghost in the Machine

Hi all. I am experiencing a slow startup issue, and have browsed through this forum and have not found anyone with a problem similar to mine. My computer boots from BIOS at a decent time, but it is followed by a blacked out screen for about 40 seconds before the Windows logo displays.

Firstly, a slight description of my current situation. I decided to consolidate both my older computers into a single more powerful one, and cannibalized most parts from my old PC while adding new components (all old hardware used are still supported by my new system). My new harware are:

MSI K9N Neo Motherboard
Kingston Memory 1G (new motherboard does not support DDR1 rams)
AMD Athlon 64x2 dual
NVidia GeForce 8500 GT graphic card
LG H54N DVD Burner/Player
Linksys Wireless Router, D-Link Wireless Transmitter
and (probably irrelevant) new keyboard, mouse and casing

Firstly, both my old HDD's were from separate computers, a Western Digital 250G (model WD2500JB) and a Seagate 40G (ST340016A). I have never experienced a slow startup with either computers.

After consolidating them, I also reformatted my Seagate 40G, as well as the partition for my OS (Windows XP Pro) on my Western Digital. After experiencing a slow startup on my WD, I experimented with installing Windows on my Seagate with the same result.

Now, I have kept all my startup items to a minimum, checked my IDE connections, defragmented and ran disk checks on both drives. I also went as far as removing all hardware not necessary to startup running only a single HD, with the same result. Therefore, even off a fresh install (on the smaller Seagate drive) experienced a slow startup. I also installed the relevant hardware drivers.

Based on all my actions above, i presume that my startup problem is probably related to one of the new hardware that I mentioned above. Can somebody please help me?

 

You've done a pretty thourough job of diagnosing and eliminating any possible causes of slow startup... this leads me to believe it's either a driver issue (perhaps the video driver is taking a long time to completely load up), or a minor hardware issue. I'm a bit at a loss here, maybe check to be sure you're using hi-speet data cables on your hard drives, and make sure your BIOS settings are seeing the RAM and CPU speeds correctly. Many newer MB's allow for RAM speed changes, and it could be your RAM (and/or CPU) is actually "underclocked"...... so, double check the BIOS settings..... other than that, I dunno :confused Maybe someone else will come along and shed more light on this for us both. I'd be interested to see exactly what's causing the delay.

hd2k

 

I was poking thru some PDF's I have thinking that I had an article that would be of interest. Here it is (attached as a .zip)... just unzip and open with Adobe Reader....
Enjoy

 

Hopperdave,

After viewing the PDF file you sent me, I can confirm that my quick power on self test is on. Also I disabled the floppy boot. I don't have a boot delay option in my BIOS setup. My boot defrag was also on when I checked at regedit. I also cleaned out my registry, which I normally do from time to time. My startup was still the same after those.

My cable connections to the hard drive are both drives going through a single 80-wire IDE cable with the jumpers set right, and the IDE connected in the proper order. I only have one IDE channel on my motherboard, so I connected my DVD drive via a IDE PCI connector which I don't think is the problem as I had previously removed it to rule it out as the cause.

My CPU and Memory clocked correctly in BIOS. I also downloaded the latest driver for my graphic card on the NVidia website as well, but unfortunately the startup remained the same.

I did, however notice that my graphic card was detected as a PCI card, although it was a PCIE. I corrected that setting, to no avail. I did not touch the latency timer and left it at 64 though.

I am thinking that we can rule the graphic card out as the problem. Right now I suspect its the motherboard or the BIOS settings...

 

Hmmmm.... I'm going to do some more research on this for you. It might be a day or two before I can post back so please be patient. I'll do what I can. Hopefully, in the meantime, someone else will come along and offer some insight to the situation.....

hd2k

 

Much appreciated, hd2k

 

After a considerable time of searching, i've come to the possibility that my slow startup could be caused by the NVidia IDE drivers that I have installed.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33806055

However, I dont wanna go ahead and start uninstalling and tearing stuff apart until I know for certain that it is the culprit. I disabled it with device manager to see if there was a difference in startup time (none whatsoever).

Searching through more on the issue, apparently the drivers seem stubborn to uninstallation.

My question is: if I disable the NVidia IDE drivers via device manager, will it still load, hence not showing any difference in startup time?

 

Yes you can uninstall. it will run on default drivers. ed