MSI K7T Turbo - 20 second pause after IDE detection

[RBuck]

I know many are experiencing this annoying little pause. It is exactly 20 seconds long. Has anyone found a fix? Someone in another K7T Turbo thread said they finally got rid of it, but wasn't sure what BIOS setting it was. I have tried A TON of different settings, and I will eventually find it.. Anyone?

So far I've confirmed the pause exists in bios revs: 2.4, 2.5 and beta 1.6

 

[tracerbullet]

That may have been me. I reformatted my drives while playing around with everything, and it didn't come back. I set the BIOS to all of the defaults, and then it did. So I have the delay again myself, but didn't for a while.

Thus, I'm pretty certain it's a BIOS thing... it's probably one of them that doesn't make any sense that it would cause it but does.

Since it's between the MSI BIOS and the Promise screen, I'm ruling out Windows or anything related as well. It also exists with only a video card plugged in, so I don't think it's getting confused with any PCI cards.

You tried PnP O/S on and off, right? If that ain't it, I'm sure it's in there somewhere...

 

[tracerbullet]

Well, don't hate me because I'm beautiful. It's gone again. I can't explain it. I didn't change anything. It screams right through the RAM check, the IDE detection, straight into the Promise screen, and then into Windows.

I didn't do anything, I swear. It's been doing slow boot the last two days. I've been turning power on and off and doing stupid stuff like playing solitaire or MP3's, just to check stuff out. I din't change any BIOS settings tonight, or install any cards or drivers, anything like that. Just turning it on and off and running programs.

I can't tell you what to change, because I didn't make any changes... it just did it on it's own, as impossible as it sounds...

 

[RBuck]

ARRGGGHHHH!!! must... kill... you....

 

[hydrobum]

I'll send you another bullet Rbuck!

 

[tracerbullet]

Are there any programs that pull BIOS settings verbatim into a Windows usage format? That is, is there an easy way I can copy my settings onto something that i can e-mail out to you, instead of having to write each one down by hand and then type it in later?

If you can figure out an easy way, I don't mind sending out my settings for you to comapre against.

However, unlike my previous statement, I wonder if it's not a BIOS setting? I didn't change anything in my BIOS last night at all, but the boot delay went away, so perhaps it's not in there?

Would MSI lend a minute to explain what is going on in that timre frame of getting past IDE detection and before the Promise detection? Could they provide like a sequence of events to give us some ideas?

 

[RBuck]

I don't think anyone at MSI gives a crap. I don't know of a way to extract your bios settings, however, you could load optimized defaults and then jot down what you change from there? I watched the DLED lights last night on a boot up and it indicates IDE detection during the 20 second pause. I personally dont have a single hard drive connected to my onboard IDE (using RAID). I have a CDROM on Secondary Master and thats it.. how bout you Tracer?

 

[tracerbullet]

Heh, it's filled up. DVD, third old hard drive, CD burner, and yet another basic CD ROM cause my old one extracts audio so much faster. Overkill, I know.

Consider monkeying with the IDE info - I think my UDMA setings are on auto (which sounds time consuming), and I think I set everything to PIO mode 4 (Don't know what it does, but set it up like a newbie). Maybe one or two more things on that screen. Might be a lead.

Not to interested in going back to defaults in case it goes slow again... but I'll consider writing the settings down this weekend and posting them.

I think you're on to something with the drives and the lights - but instead of searching for something, maybe it's sticking in a way... know what I mean? Maybe it's not "doing" what they lights say, but attempting to begin the next thing. Well, that doesn't make sense either.

Allright, I'm pretty sure I'll write the settings down. But it'll be a few days. Until then, rummage around that screen with the IDE info. Also, if you know anything about PIO, let us know.

 

[RBuck]

K, I'll monkey with it this weekend.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

No solution yet, assuming there is one. But I've ruled out almost everything except a Power Management setting.

I disabled IDE1, IDE2, parallel, serial 1 and 2 and the floppy controller as well as just about everything thing else through my 50 reboot testing but the delay after it scans the IDE and before the Promise controller is still there.

I did speed up the boot process a bit by changing the boot drive options. I now only have one option which sped things up a bit after the Promise controller does it's thing.

 

[tracerbullet]

Hah! I got it!

Hope you guys are still reading. It's the hard drive. I know I said I didn't change anything in the past to make it go away, and was really sure about it. I guess I still am. But I did a little experimenting and I found something - having a hard drive attached to IDE 1 or 2...

OK - I have a 400W Antec PS in my 840 so I could have RAID and lots of stuff attached, which I do. Primary Master is a CD Burner. Primary Slave is a 50x CD ROM. Secondary Master is a DVD player. Secondary slave is a Maxtor 15Gig hard drive. RAID has a pair of IBM 45's on it. (Man, that is a lot of stuff!)

So - if I unplug the Maxtor - long boot up. Plug it in, very fast boot.

Are you guys running HD's on your IDE 1 or 2? If not, give it a shot - would make sure if that's what it is or not. Maybe the BIOS has a built in "gee, no hard drive, better check again for 20 seconds" built into it?

*Bows

 

[skeeteroplagus]

I personally found when having a harddrive hooked up to the primary channel as a master and nothing hooked up to promise that it booted perfectly. When using the promise and no harddrive on primary it just slowed down during boot. Similar issue that I had w/ the MSI BXMaster, the Promise ata66 takes a long time to boot when compared to other mobo's...

 

[RBuck]

Well.. tada!! Figures it would be that. Why would I want a standard IDE drive? BAH!!! Thanks Tracer.. but your weird for having an array AND ide drive!

 

[Need4Speed]

well...just to through this into the mix...

I too get the long pause and have found no way around it. The catch is that I dont have a single IDE device installed. My box is all scsi. any more ideas on how to rid myself of this problem?

 

[RBuck]

Then you have the exact problem we all do, the Promise controller is a SCSI card as far as the mainboard bios is concerned. It pauses if there is no IDE boot drive it appears.. giving it ample time to respond, as if its unthinkable that there wouldn't be one.. doh!

 

[Need4Speed]

my bad..didnt read about the Promise controller
ill keep trying as well and maybe make some calls

 

[tracerbullet]

My IDE 15Gig Maxtor is a back up. I recommend having something... I don't 100% trust the RAID (yet). I've lost everything once before, and it sucked. Still haven't reassembled everything that I lost (lots of scanned photos, MP3's from CD's I sold off, etc.) So, that's what that drive is, I occasionally make back ups to it just in case. I already owned it and had no other use for it.

And, it makes my system boot fast too!

 

[Need4Speed]

i have read some info in the newsgroubs that it might have somehting to do with the USB option. When i get home from work i will disable all my usb settings and see if that helps...

 

[kw3i]

so am i going to have to hook up a ide HD to this thing to get it to boot like a normal computer? i am currently running scsi and that would really annoy me since i dont want to install the extra cable/HD.

 

[RBuck]

Yep, the pause at bootup is a 20-second IDE boot device timeout. It isn't going away Live with it, or slap some stupid IDE hard drive in.