XP Pro SP-3 startup lag

Greetings,

Am scrapping together parts to make a system for my 84 year old mom. Was given a box with everything but a hard drive. Added a SATA drive. Spent DAYS messing with settings in order to get XP Pro SP-3 installed and finally online. (I'll put Win7 in as soon as I determine the system is dependable).

Now, there is a 30 second delay between the screen that says "Start from CD" and the XP Starting (splash?) screen,

How can I find out what is causing this unnecessary half minute of black screen delay (and get rid of it)? I suspect a BIOS/CMOS setting, but just don't know for sure.

TIA

~drcarl

 

Could be any or all of a million and one things but the very first thing I would check is that there isn't a disk in the optical drive or a flash drive plugged in. I spent ages researching why my laptop's Win 7 was taking so long to boot and it was simply that I was always leaving a flash drive plugged in. Removing it and plugging it in when needed cut the startup from 2½ minutes to 50 seconds.

Other than that, the type of delay you are experiencing is often down to a driver needing an update. Tedious job of analysing errors and warnings in Event Viewer.

 

Greetings Earthling - nothing in the drives, ALL drivers updated within the last 12 hours with "SlimDrivers". I'll check event viewer; great idea! Thank you for the input. ~drcarl