Re: Very slow to start boot


"ohaya" <ohaya@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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ohaya wrote:



Chris Melluish wrote:

"ohaya" <ohaya@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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harikeo wrote:

Chris Melluish wrote:


"Adrian C" <email@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Chris Melluish wrote:


I have just built a new PC for a friend, re-using some of the bits
from his Dell 5150 which was not working too well.


...


What is it doing for these two minutes?


It's trying (badly) to figure out which IDE DVD drive is which?

If you've moved the original DELL cable over, make sure you have the
DVD drives set as 'cable select' - not master/slave.

But first just remove the DVD drives and see if you lose the wait.

--
Adrian C



I used a new IDE cable which came with the motherboard.

When I first tried to power it up I had not installed the DVD drives,
nor the hard disc for that matter.



does the BIOS have a Quick Boot option? I think I've seen something
like this which swaps between a full 'scan' and a quick one.



Hi,

Before the 2 minutes elapses, is there anything on the display at all?

Also, some BIOSes have a setting for a hard drive delay, i.e., where it
waits for X seconds for the drive to power up. Is it possible that
this BIOS has that, and maybe it got set to ~2 minutes? Did you try
setting the BIOS to defaults?

Jim


There is nothing on the display at all. His monitor has a feature I have
not seen before, in that when it is switched on the power switch lights
up amber, and when it receives a signal it turns green. This turning
green, after about two minutes, is the sign that it is about to display
the BIOS flash screen.

I can't find any hard drive delay feature, but I haven't set the BIOS to
defaults. I assumed it was set to defaults on a new motherboard.



Hi,

My LCD monitor (Envision) does something similar, LED amber when powered
on, blue when video signal received.

I do note that if the monitor is connected to my PC via the DVI cable
(large white connector to the back of the PC), I have to turn the monitor
on a few seconds BEFORE I start my PC. If I don't do that, i.e., if I
power the PC on too quickly after I power the monitor on, I can sometimes
get into a situation where even though the PC boots, I get nothing (not
even the BIOS display) on the monitor.

This behavior doesn't occur if I use the regular VGA connector from the
monitor to my PC.

Based on what you described, I don't think that is the delay you're
seeing, but if his monitor and his PC has both DVI and VGA, maybe try
switch the monitor-to-PC connection to VGA, then see what happens?

The reason that I don't think that's the problem is because you siad that
when it turns green, then you see the BIOS display, and I think that
you're saying that it's taking 2 minutes before the BIOS display is
appearing at all.

Is that right?

Please try to set the BIOS defaults, or "clear BIOS", and see if that
helps. Also try the VGA connection. Maybe it's displaying something
before the monitor is ready to display, if you use the DVI.

With all the other posts, plus your response to my post, I'm puzzled at
this point. I don't know what else it might be :(....

Jim



Hi,

The only other thing I can suggest, is what I would probably do, which is
to disconnect EVERYTHING (hard drive, CD drives, remove all memory except
for 1 stick), except for monitor, and keyboard. Then power the machine
up, and see if still takes 2 minutes for the BIOS display to appear.

If the BIOS display does appear quickly, then start plugging in things,
one-at-a-time.

Jim


Thanks for the replies.

When I first tried the new machine out I had only installed the motherboard,
memory and CPU. I had not even plugged in the USB mouse and keyboard. I had
not installed the hard drive and DVD drives, nor his graphics card - it is
using the on-board graphics. I was initially using the DVI connection, but
the first thing I tried was to use VGA instead, but it made no difference. I
was expecting it to say 'no boot device', which it did eventually. My
initial worry was that the motherboard did not support the CPU - the ASUS
web site said that it supported the CPU revision B1, but I could not find
any way of determining the revision number. It was not printed on the CPU as
I would expect. As the machine works perfectly once loaded I assume that
this is not the problem.

I installed 4GB memory, not realising that XP only supports 3GB. I can't see
that this is the problem, as the motherboard does not know what operating
system I am using until it boots something, and the motherboard supports
8GB.

I think I will try removing one of the memory cards, if that makes no
difference then replace it with his old, slower memory.
I will also reset to defaults in the BIOS.

The Asus site has a facility to assist with boot problems, but it keeps
asking questions about beeps. I did not bother to connect the speaker
(assuming the case has one) so I couldn't answer the questions. It said to
connect the speaker and retry. I will also do this and see if anything of
interest happens.

The problem is that the machine is about 40 miles away so it is a bit of an
effort to get there.

--
Chris Melluish





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