Asus a8n slow boot up

[ellisz]

Hi all,

I picked up a Asus A8n SLI premium board to replace an older Socket A board. I Formatted the partition from my old IDE HD and installed a fresh copy of XP pro. Everything seems to run fine but on the initial boot up, it take about 25 seconds to detect the primary HD and then takes an additional 60 seconds to get to the windows loading screen. Once windows starts, it boots up fast - 5 seconds. In the IRQ devices listing before windows starts, ACPI is the last thing on the list.

I did not get the driver disk for the MB so I have installed drivers from the website that it appeared I needed.

I have built a few PCs but I am limited on what I know when it comes to troubleshooting. I know enough to get in trouble

Any ideas on what I can try to speed this up? I have a IDE HD as primary master, a DVD burner as secondary master and a video card that is brand new. That is all I have installed. It looks like it is hanging up on something before it gets to windows.

I was thinking about updating the bios but it looks like I have the latest non-beta version.

edited for actual times vs. estimates.

Thanks

 

[Nitemare]

be careful updating the bios. I flashed my A2N-E from windows and now the bios is corrupted and unbootbale.

 

[SunSamurai]

I never understood why people need fast system restarts. I restart my system maybe once a week. Sometimes more when fiddling with OC but that doesnt last long. Instead of shutting your PC down, let it sleep, or suspend it. Fiddling with BIOS updates so your computer starts up 90 seconds faster isnt worth it.

 

[imported_Scoop]

Maybe your HDD is wearing down? When I built my system some 7 months ago, the initial bootup with only the brand new WD SATA HDD was lightning fast. After that I added an older IDE Maxtor drive and the startup took a bit longer but I thought I could live with that. Then I added an even older IDE drive which I knew had some issues and the startup took about 15min until I got to windows. That was a bit too much and so I had to let that drive go.

 

[ellisz]

I think the bios I have will do. I am not using any special functions so a beta release is not really necessary. I just wanted to make sure everything was working properly. With the hang ups, that tells me something is not right. Could very well be the HD. Do you think trying a IDE to sata converter would help any? The HD is old but still pretty quiet compared to some of the others I have as spares. Maybe I will see about picking up a SATA.

This is the kids computer so I really don't want it on 24/7 like I do mine. No reason to waste more electric.

Thanks for the ideas.

 

[RiverRicer]

Check the master/slave jumpers on your IDE components. AMI bios' need those configured properly to work on the IDE channels..........otherwise very slow boots!

 

[walk2k]

Go to the Device Manager, IDE drivers, "Advanced" tab I think it is (from memory..) and disable "NCQ" - though it may be called something else, I forget exactly, I can look later when I get home... have an old A8N-E still running.