Help? P4P800 Really slow bootup - a lot of HDD activity before WinXP is usable...

Its taking me around 1minute 10seconds to load WinXP to get a desktop

But when I get the desktop - the HDD grinds on for another minute before I
can really use WinXP

So total time is around 2:10 or 2:20 for boot up (how does this fair - my
laptop certainly boots up and is usable in 40-50sec)

"William Cheng" wrote in message
. ..
Hi all,

I've been noticing a problem get progressively worst - the time after
bootup
which I can start using WinXP. The actual boot up is not that bad, and I
get my desktop quite quickly, however, the HDD activity light is going
like
crazy, and I can hear my HDD working overtime for a while before I can
actually use WinXP. I have checked all the usual suspects like
Spy/Ad/wares, or virus and I perform regular mantenances such as disk
defrags on my HDDs. The most noticable jump in time to wait came when I
switched my system HDD to a secondary VIA RAID controller (which isn't
being
used as a RAID) - to use my Intel ICH5 controller to control my ATAPI
optical drives (which my VIA controller doesn't support). This was
unfortunately the only way I can get all 3 of my optical drives running at
the same time. I checked that the VIA controller is transferring in
UDMA5.
Once everything is running, everything seems fine - just the bootup time.

I am still on WinXP SP1a and my system specs a

Intel P4 2.4Ghz HT enabled
Asus P4P800 Deluxe (w/2x 512Mb dual channel =1Gb)
Intel IDE:
Primary: Sony DVD-RW (DRU-530A) -master
Secondary: LiteOn CD-RW -master
Secondary: Pioneer DVD-A05 -slave
VIA IDE:
Primary: WD 120Gb (System) -master
Primary: WD 120Gb -slave
Secondary: Quantum 6.4Gb -master
SCSI:
IBM 4Gb HDD
Iomega ZIP removeable
SyQuest 200Mb removeable
ATI Radeon 9000
ATI TV-Wonder

p.s. I heard something a while back that the VIA controller might be the
cause?
Thanks,
Wm

William Cheng wrote:

Oh, that makes sense, is there anyway to tell XP where everything is now
manually, instead of having it hunt everytime it loads up?

If no drive letters changed then everything is where it should be.


"Frank" wrote in message
. ..

"William Cheng" wrote in message
m...

Hi all,

I've been noticing a problem get progressively worst - the time after
bootup
which I can start using WinXP. The actual boot up is not that bad, and

I

get my desktop quite quickly, however, the HDD activity light is going
like
crazy, and I can hear my HDD working overtime for a while before I can
actually use WinXP. I have checked all the usual suspects like
Spy/Ad/wares, or virus and I perform regular mantenances such as disk
defrags on my HDDs.

The most noticable jump in time to wait came when I

switched my system HDD to a secondary VIA RAID controller (which isn't
being
used as a RAID) - to use my Intel ICH5 controller to control my ATAPI
optical drives (which my VIA controller doesn't support).

This was unfortunately the only way I can get all 3 of my optical drives
running at
the same time. I checked that the VIA controller is transferring in
UDMA5.
Once everything is running, everything seems fine - just the bootup

time.

I am still on WinXP SP1a and my system specs a

XP is hunting for things that you moved.

"William Cheng" wrote in message
.. .
Its taking me around 1minute 10seconds to load WinXP to get a desktop

But when I get the desktop - the HDD grinds on for another minute before I
can really use WinXP

So total time is around 2:10 or 2:20 for boot up (how does this fair - my
laptop certainly boots up and is usable in 40-50sec)


I haven't seen any mention of how much RAM you have. If you are short of RAM
it could cause a lot of disk thrashing because of swapping.

you shep haven't seen you since looking around the elitegroup newsgroup.
i've still got my k7s5a.