Asrock Dual 939 SATAII - 40 second delay after post...

[Arjunne]

Well, I installed a new Asrock Dual SATAII board into my system, with a new 3000+64 Athlon Venice.

There doesn't seem to be any problems in windows, my only problem is that, following the post screen, I get a flashing cursor at the top left, and it seems to hang for about 40 seconds, finally loading windows up after this long delay.

My current configuration is this:

939 3000+ Venice
80 Gig WD 800JB
200 Gig WD2000JB (both are IDE and both jumpers are set to cable select)
DVD ROM (Master)
BenQ DVD Writer (slave)
2 sticks of Kingston DDR 400 side by side (single channel ram)
9800 Radeon Pro

Now - one thing is, in POST, it says "Dual Channel Mode" for ram - but I only have single channel ram - could that influence this delay?

Furthermore, are there any BIOS settings that I may be missing? The manual is completely lacking in any form of BIOS setting information.

I am currently running BIOS VERSION 1.6

Thanks in advance for any help; I have browsed some of the more popular ASROCK forum posts, but they seem to deal more with Serial ATA problems, which I don't have.

 

[professor1942]

I'd unplug the DVD drives and the secondary HDD and see if it still happens. It's probably one of those.

Your RAM should be fine in dual channel mode, if it isn't stable then you just need to move one stick into another slot and it will run single channel.

 

[imported_Imp]

The fact that you actually boot at all after such a long wait is good. Mines came back with an "Insert proper boot device..." after 30 seconds. Sounds like it's looking for something to boot with. Did you properly set the boot order (HDD w/XP as #1, optical as #2), mines defaults to DVD as first boot device. Otherwise, try out what professor1942 if that's not the case.

Also, as many have said, no such thing as dual channel Ram. Your two sticks running in either of the paired memory banks makes it dual channel if possible, so don't worry about that.

Good luck.

 

[Arjunne]

Thanks for the advice; I'll try that.

I've set my first boot device to my main HDD, but still no luck there. I'll try the unplug everything method; hopefully that brings an end to this issue.

 

[carstea2]

make sure ur optical drive is set to primary and plugged to the secondary(ide2). the simpliest thing for you is to unplug the optical drive and see what it happens. good luck

 

[Arjunne]

Strange; I unplugged the secondary HDD (my 200gig) and I don't get the startup hang anymore.

Any ideas guys? Should I change them from "cable select", jumper setting wise, to "Master/slave"???

 

[professor1942]

Worth a try I'd say, maybe even a different cable would help...

 

[Arjunne]

Problem solved:

New Cable, and set to "Master/Slave" rather than cable select.

Thanks again for helping me out guys; was worried I'd have to RMA it!