[calabris]

I am running XP home edition on my P4 system. I reformatted my drive and installed XP fresh. When I boot, the splash screen is on for about 2 min, the bar is moving the entire time. Then a blank screen for about 10 sec. Then the XP is starting screen lasts about 1 min, then the dessktop comes up and that takes about 1.5 min before I can do anything. I have seen XP system take as little as 3- sec or less to boot. The hard drive is being accessed the entire time it is booting. It has never reported an error, any ideas why this is so SLOW?

My system:
P4 1.8 Ghz
Intel 850GB
512K RAMDAC
Radeon 8500 128m DDR
Sound blaster LIVE!
52X creative CD-ROM
Iomega 12x10x32 Burner.

Thanks

[tHêGhð§tÔfT¡mé]

Try turning on UDMA under Device Manager for your harddrives and if u only have 1 IDE harddrive connected to Primary IDE channel and your CDROM connected to your Secondary IDE channel....turn off AUTO DETECT IDE DEVICES that will speed up your boot time.

[OLEerror]

Also, be sure you're running the latest drivers for your RADEON and Live! cards.

[calabris]

I have loaded the latest drivers for everyting. I am running 1 CD-rom and one burner on the secondary ide channel and two hard drives on the primary. Both drives are 7200 RPM with udma/100. I have checked in device manager and both drives are running on UDMA. I am also running the boot drive in a removable cage so I can switch between XP and 98. When I boot in 98 it boots in about a normal amout of time for 98. XP takes two to three times longer to boot

[Sampson]

What brand of hard drive are you running?

[calabris]

The boot drive is a western digital 30 gig, the second drive is a 20 gig IBM drive.

[Sampson]

It may be that you should install the Intel ATA drivers or the Accelerator Application since the XP drivers are so slow. http://downloadfinder2.intel.com/scripts...mp;submit=Go%21

[Davros]

Any network cards in there? Try disabling any NICs in device manager and rebooting to see if it boots quickly.

[EddiE314]

have you tried BootVis from Microsoft, it might shave a few seconds off.

[Sampson]

Consider whether you might need these: Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility v4.00.1011

[Mr.Guvernment]

Quote:

I have checked in device manager and both drives are running on UDMA. I am also running the boot drive in a removable cage so I can switch between XP and 98.

u know how slow those things make your system

to me this is why. Removable drives are good for starage, adn abck up, but to run an O/S off of, no.

Why do u even need 98 anymore?

98 also does boot faster as it does not have an interface like XP, and has alot less to load.

[Alien]

Why would a removable HDD cage make a hit on performance? it's still connected to the mobo's IDE controller.

[calabris]

I have had the cage in for a while. It was running fine one day and very slow the next. I did not install and new drivers or hardware. But around the same time, my screensaver stopped working. They will show in preview fine, but I can never get it to pop up automaticly after so many min.
I have to swich back to 98 beacuce their are some programs my wife has that will not run on XP.

[serket]

wash your hands!

[akiss]

try to update to the latest inf update from intel.it work for me.

[calabris]

Just an update, I changed hard drives and reformatted it with XP and now everything runs great. I dont know why with the old drive it was a slug. I did not have to many TSR's running. Maybe the drive was staring to die. It was a WD Caviar drive so maybe that was it. Thanks for all the help

[theelviscerator]

More than likely you are having hw conflicts and Xp is trying to sort things out or its network issues trying to get an ip address possibly and not getting it very fast..Try a reinstall with vid card only and check boot times then add back hw till something puts the kibash on it...or sorts out..check irq sharing and make sure you dont install cards where anything is shared if at all possible...

[embj]

Try to tweak it up. A good place to find tweak websites for XP is @ http://www.funwithxp.com/ . Also, if you do not use Media Player find a tweak that deals with that. There is some tweak that disables the fancy graphics I believe. Just look for that. That is one slow down.

[usinmyname]

Ok with slow boot problems in xp there are alot of things that could cause this all the above are some well here are a couple more things to try out here go's ok first of all visit http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm and disable all services you dont need i usually disable around 10, 2nd go to start button,run,type in msconfig, click the start up tab uncheck everything, 3rd go back to run type in regedit go to Hkey local machine,system,control set1,control,session manager,memory managment,prefetch paramaters then in the right column double click enable prefetcher change the number to 2 click ok close regedit and reboot after you reboot use a registry cleaner then scan your disk for errors and defrag, after done defraging reboot again download bootvis from the microsoft site run that and follow the instructions after running bootvis if you dont have service pack1 get it and intsall it if all this dont work then i guess nothing will..........Format reinstall xp right after installation install sp1 that should definetly fix the prob.

[Mr.Guvernment]

Quote:

Why would a removable HDD cage make a hit on performance? it's still connected to the mobo's IDE controller.

i always thought that removable drivers were considerably slower in their connection from the drive into the cage.

guess i was wrong.