Ubeatable Slow Boot/Load Times

UnheardEcho

Member
Apr 3, 2005
51
0
0
Long story short (sorta), awhile ago my 200gb 7200RPM Hitachi ATA HDD began booting very slowly into Windows. I'm lazy and procrastinate and didn't notice any other problems so I didn't really try to fix it, I'd just get home, turn on my computer, have a snack or something, come back, and it would be ready to log on so it wasn't that big of an inconvenience. Recently, with games like BF2 and F.E.A.R that have large/detailed levels I've noticed slow loading times. A few months ago I reformatted, hoping to remedy my problems and was dissapointed when there was no improvement. I finally got around to buying a new Seagate 80GB 7200RPM SATA drive (I figured the Hitachi was dying or something, I've had it for awhile) and just installed Windows on it. The blue bar that is displayed while windows loads completed just over 50 passes before I got to the logon screen. On the Hitachi it's been 25, sometimes 36, but overall ridiculous compared to what I know it should be and what other people have gotten (my friends load in2-5 passes regardless of their HDD and people posting reviews of this one said it was blazing fast as well as loading in about 2-3 passes). I looked through my BIOS and saw no settings that might affect my HDDs so what is going on?

Why did it take me 50 passes to load Windows on a brand new SATA 7200RPM drive with nothing installed?Any and all help/advice is appreciated
 

Jiggz

Diamond Member
Mar 10, 2001
4,329
0
76
50 passes without any programs installed except the OS is ridiculously slow. Check the boot order and make sure you start with the OS HDD first. Disable the option about seeking the floppy. Make sure the hdd is using DMA access. Enable write caching.
 

UnheardEcho

Member
Apr 3, 2005
51
0
0
I looked around and saw no pertinent bios settings, and the IDE cable is good. I guess it could be motherboard drivers since I don't install the IDE ones for mine as they are notoriously bad. Plus this happened on both the ATA and SATA drives with different cables and different drivers(I think?).

I'm currently running only my old drive since I wasn't going to spend hours putting everything on the new one if the problem wasn't fixed. I'll try the floppy seeking option. Write caching is enabled, but how would I go about confirming it is in DMA access mode?

Plus now when I boot with only my Hitachi (the old one) i get 1 second to choose booting between two Windows XPs and the first one gets an error about not being bootable so I have to select the second one in a heartbeat.
 

CheesePoofs

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 2004
3,163
0
0
Make sure your HD cable is 80 pin, and I'd change it out with another one just to make sure its not hte cause. Try unplugging your CD drives, floppy drives, and all other unnecessary accessories form your motherboard (just leave processor, video card, ram, and HD). If that solves the problem, plug things in one at a time until you find out whats doing it.
 

UnheardEcho

Member
Apr 3, 2005
51
0
0
I'm sure the hdd cable is fine, especially since the SATA one has problems too. I'll try unplugging the other drives though and get back
 

UnheardEcho

Member
Apr 3, 2005
51
0
0
One of the things I've discovered is that my Hitachi hard drive is running in PIO mode. How do I force it into DMA?
 

Markbnj

Elite Member <br>Moderator Emeritus
Moderator
Sep 16, 2005
15,682
14
81
www.markbetz.net
Slow boot is almost always some device having a hard time initializing its hardware. I'd use msconfig.exe to selectively disable everything. Start with a diagnostic boot. If that still takes a long time then it is some basic device. You can check device manager and look for conflicts. If it doesn't take a long time in diag mode, then you know that something else is causing it, and can enable startup options and services one by one until the problem recurs.
 

UnheardEcho

Member
Apr 3, 2005
51
0
0
Well I found that the CD drive was causing the SATA drive to hang, and it boots in 2-3 passes without it, however with the bare minimum hardware the IDE drive still took forever to boot. If I could get it back into DMA mode that'd ease my mind a little and probably help the troubleshooting. As for the SATA, I'm not sure how to get it to play nice with the CD drive