ASRock 939Dual-Sata2 Slow POST Issue

[Somniferum]

I just bought an ASRock 939Dual-Sata2 and A64 3500+ from Monarch to replace my old P4 that spontaneously died. Everything works great with the new setup except for one problem: It takes a ridiculously long time to POST. When I press the power switch, the video card info comes up on the screen, followed by the BIOS version info and RAM confirmation, and it says press F2 for setup / F11 for boot menu. Then it just sits there. And sits there. For 15-20 seconds. After the 15-20 seconds is up, the PC speaker beeps and it flashes a list of my drives, then proceeds to load Windows (very quickly from that point on). Even if I press F2 for setup, it still takes 15-20 seconds before the BIOS screen comes up.

I have tried every setting I can find in BIOS, including disabling SATA and RAID (my drives are all IDE), changing the boot order to C: only, etc. So far nothing has any effect.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

<edit> Forgot to mention -- Monarch flashed the mobo with the latest BIOS (1.4 I believe). Any chance a faulty BIOS flash could be to blame?

 

[Somniferum]

Anyone own this board? It would be helpful to know if others have this problem, or don't have this problem -- either way.

 

[dunkster]

I don't have that problem, nor have I had that problem with any of several BIOS versions.

In all cases, post and boot times are quite good.

My HD is also IDE, and I also have all unnecessary devices disabled in BIOS.

A bad BIOS flash is unlikely - a bad flash usually results in no post at all.

I've seen posts indicating problems with 6800 vid cards but none for 6600 cards. A common cure for AGP problems is setting aperture to 128 or lower (mine is set at 64) or set to 4X (mine is OK at 8X).

It seems like the BIOS is having problems with either device-recognition or reading from your hard drive. The delay may be due to repeated attempts to read from the HD.

My next step would be to download and run the excellent Western Digital WDDIAG diagnostic utility for your WD hard drive. WDDIAG is excellent for finding weak storage locations, moving data from those locations, and preventing re-use of those locations.

After that, check system drivers.

Hope this helps!

 

[afrost]

fyi i don't have this problem either with several bios revs

 

[Reapsy01]

yeah that isn't normal perhaps try a different bios revision I'm using 1.2 without problems. If your video card is old cleaning the AGP connector may help.

 

[Somniferum]

Well, I solved my problem, and it turned out to be a quite unusual solution ... here's how:

First I tried Dunkster's suggestion and ran the WD diagnostic program ... both drives passed the test with no errors. I was dubious about drivers being an issue, since this problem occurs before drivers are even loaded, so I decided to remove/disable every non-essential piece of hardware, and see if the problem persisted. I unplugged all drives except my boot drive, removed the sound card, and took out 2 of my 3 sticks of RAM. Incredibly, this did not solve the problem.

Putting it all back together, I decided just for fun to change the order of the RAM modules around. Originally I had them as 256-256-512 (single-channel mode obviously ... the two 256-modules were originally used in a dual-channel system). I changed the order to 512-256-256. Booted up and ... guess what? POST in about 2 seconds! And the delay between POST and loading Windows was also significantly reduced. This thing SMOKES now!

I checked the ASRock manual again and it does not specify any particular order of memory modules for single-channel mode operation. So it seems like a flaw in either the BIOS or the board. But I'm just thrilled to have fixed my problem!

Anyway, if you have an ASRock board and upgrade your memory in the future, be careful about the order of the modules ... and if you have any issues with POSTing, try changing the order around. Worked for me!