3.5 minute boot for XP?

[oowatie]

First of all, new to the forums, so hello everyone

I recently did a build of a new system for a friend's daughter. Her old computer was an outdated Compaq Presario- unfortunately, I don't have the hardware details.

However, her new system consists of a Leadtek K8N motherboard, AMD Athlon 64 FX-51, 1 Gb Corsair RAM (matched pair), ATi Radeon x800 P.E. video card (AGP), and Creative SoundBlaster Audigy2 sound card. All of these parts came from my old system, and worked fine there. Because her hard drive was of low capacity, we opted to install a new, larger capacity SATA drive from Maxtor.

Initial build was fine, but the system would not boot into Windows XP, and would hang at setup. Because of this, we purchased another version of Windows XP Home, and replaced the previous version with it. Boot up seemed normal. Installed all of the motherboard drivers (chipset, Sata, LAN), then used propietary Maxtor software to detect, format, and move all files from the original hard drive (IDE, btw) to the new Sata drive.

After removing the IDE drive and selecting the Sata drive as the boot device in Bios, restarted the computer. Boot was slow, taking anywhere from 2 to 3.5 minutes to boot to XP.

Hopefully, all of you builders out there will know more about this than I, and I thank you for your help in advance.

[taz55]

it takes that long to boot into windows. but does windows load. did you check the old drive for errors currupt files, virusses, malware and what not. what exactly did you copy from her old hardrive just files or system files.

[Clark_Kent]

taz55 wrote:

it takes that long to boot into windows

I am sorry to tell you i don't think so my boot times for windows xp pro is 35 seconds....

IF it take that long it's because you have something wrong with your OS....

Do you have sata or sata2 ???

[taz55]

Originally Posted by Clark_Kent

taz55 wrote:



I am sorry to tell you i don't think so my boot times for windows xp pro is 35 seconds....

IF it take that long it's because you have something wrong with your OS....

Do you have sata or sata2 ???

i said that as a question not a statement.

but yeah i was thinking somthing was wrong with the os like in the registry depending on what was copied over.

[oowatie]

A friendly bump, if it is allowed. If not, I apologize.

[Bambo]

Had it been a NF4 motherboard hd might need new firmware. Some Maxtor drives boots slowly on NF4, 3-4 min. or more.

But what about this "Fixed install OS fail with SATA HDD" from here http://www.leadtek.com.tw/eng/mainbo...lineid=3&act=3 You have XP installed somehow but does not use latest bios? Try that - be sure to flash and set up bios correctly.

Bios for my NF4 even had "Support Maxtor 300 GB HDD" as a "fix". Strange things can happen with bios.

Safe mode also takes forever?

[oowatie]

Fixing the Bios is definitely something I'll try (and should have tried earlier, I might add).

And yes, Safe Mode also boots slowly. Thanks for the replies!

[Tonglebeak]

If it's an nForce4 mobo, make sure you install the IDE SW driver from nvidia.

I had this happen to me (a 25 second hang on bootup), but after installing that driver, bootup is normal now.

[oowatie]

Well, Leadtek's site downloads a Windows bios update that doesn't work, hehe.

Anyone know how to update a system bios in dos? :

[Bambo]

What does not work? Unpack exe-file, just run it - punch in ie. "c:\bios" as destination. There you have Winflash and bin-file. Run Winflash.exe, tick "DMI area" "Bootblock" and "Clear Cmos". Note that will leave you with an almost blank bios so must reload "optimized" default or "best defaults" as Leadktek calls it - and perhaps edit few settings. Then you either click "update bios" or open file then update bios.

For the Winflash version be sure you download from USA server cause I can see the Taiwan file have wrong bin-file, is not latest but "59400111". Get "59400325"

Dos flash is even easier. Make a bootable floppy, extract/copy content of download. Reboot. At dos prompt run "autoflash". Not sure how it flashes but again you should prepare to go into bios and set it up from scratch. Load "best defaults" and edit what needs to be edited. Very few things, like boot disk - perhaps memory voltage/timings. Check what settings you have now before flashing.

[oowatie]

Actually, Winflash would not run. Gave me an error pop-up and died. I will, however, be trying to update the bios via dos tomorrow. Thanks, Bambo

[~Pyrate~]

Did you also copy the system files from the old hard drive to the new one? You should only copy your personal files(mp3s, word documents, etc.) If you would like to keep the same settings as the old computer must use the file transfer wizard. Once you've backed up your files to CD/DVD just reformat both drives, and install windows.

[oowatie]

The utility that was included with the new Maxtor Sata drive basically copied everything from the old hard drive to the new one. Being that this is the first time I've ever done that type of an install, I'm inclined to believe that whatever went wrong happened at that point. Therefore, I'm going to wipe the new drive and start from scratch. Thanks to everyone for all the help :D