I got a clean install of Vista Home Premium onto a new SATA drive and began
adding my old hardware back in with no problems whatsoever.

I installed a SIIG UltraATA 133 EIDE PCI controller card in a PCI expansion
slot so I could add all my IDE hard drives. No problem! Vista even updated
the driver for me! HOWEVER.....

As soon as I plugged my hard drives into the controller card, Vista began
taking over an hour to boot! Becoming anxious and worried about data, I did
a hard stop and unplugged the hard drives from the controller.

The Welcome Screen never showed, all I had was a blinking cursor up in the
top left of the screen. The hdd led stayed lit the entire time, indicating
hard drive activity, so Vista was up to something. With hard drive activity
indicated, it seems to me it should not be a crash.

Is it indexing all the data on the drives even before giving me the Welcome
Screen? Any other explanations?

The hard drives are 120 mb, and 160 mb. Neither are boot drives, they are
storage only. The controller card correctly identified the drives at boot.

Please help.

You added IDE drives to your system. What are the pin configurations of
these drives. Is one designated as a Master and the other Slave? If so,
you could be having problems with the drives fighting over who gets to start
up, therefore the long delay. Just a thought.


"fideist" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:8E270C00-91F3-44AC-BDD3-(E-Mail Removed)...
>I got a clean install of Vista Home Premium onto a new SATA drive and began
> adding my old hardware back in with no problems whatsoever.
>
> I installed a SIIG UltraATA 133 EIDE PCI controller card in a PCI
> expansion
> slot so I could add all my IDE hard drives. No problem! Vista even
> updated
> the driver for me! HOWEVER.....
>
> As soon as I plugged my hard drives into the controller card, Vista began
> taking over an hour to boot! Becoming anxious and worried about data, I
> did
> a hard stop and unplugged the hard drives from the controller.
>
> The Welcome Screen never showed, all I had was a blinking cursor up in
> the
> top left of the screen. The hdd led stayed lit the entire time,
> indicating
> hard drive activity, so Vista was up to something. With hard drive
> activity
> indicated, it seems to me it should not be a crash.
>
> Is it indexing all the data on the drives even before giving me the
> Welcome
> Screen? Any other explanations?
>
> The hard drives are 120 mb, and 160 mb. Neither are boot drives, they are
> storage only. The controller card correctly identified the drives at
> boot.
>
> Please help.

fideist wrote:
> I got a clean install of Vista Home Premium onto a new SATA drive and began
> adding my old hardware back in with no problems whatsoever.
>
> I installed a SIIG UltraATA 133 EIDE PCI controller card in a PCI expansion
> slot so I could add all my IDE hard drives. No problem! Vista even updated
> the driver for me! HOWEVER.....

Yes -- however ;o) I've read many times in these groups that Windows
Vista Update is not the best source of Vista drivers, and the problem
you describe sounds like a driver problem to me.

Bill's suggestion to check the jumpers on the drives is the way to
start, but if that doesn't work then definitely check with SIIG for
a Vista driver and use it instead of the one you have now.

Make sure IDE cables are both new style 80 way cables. Set both drives to
cable select and try them one at a time. If you changed the computer name or
your user / admin names or passwords it may be that NTFS is doing something
with permissions.

I'm only guessing here but I've seen it happen once or twice and sometimes
it seems your files become invisible or just reappear and next boot all is
well.

I hasten to add that this is only guessing but based on the fact that with a
full drive changing file permission sometimes takes forever and changing
names occasionally makes things vanish under XP / NTFS it seems permissions
may have something to do with it.





"fideist" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:8E270C00-91F3-44AC-BDD3-(E-Mail Removed)...
>I got a clean install of Vista Home Premium onto a new SATA drive and began
> adding my old hardware back in with no problems whatsoever.
>
> I installed a SIIG UltraATA 133 EIDE PCI controller card in a PCI
> expansion
> slot so I could add all my IDE hard drives. No problem! Vista even
> updated
> the driver for me! HOWEVER.....
>
> As soon as I plugged my hard drives into the controller card, Vista began
> taking over an hour to boot! Becoming anxious and worried about data, I
> did
> a hard stop and unplugged the hard drives from the controller.
>
> The Welcome Screen never showed, all I had was a blinking cursor up in
> the
> top left of the screen. The hdd led stayed lit the entire time,
> indicating
> hard drive activity, so Vista was up to something. With hard drive
> activity
> indicated, it seems to me it should not be a crash.
>
> Is it indexing all the data on the drives even before giving me the
> Welcome
> Screen? Any other explanations?
>
> The hard drives are 120 mb, and 160 mb. Neither are boot drives, they are
> storage only. The controller card correctly identified the drives at
> boot.
>
> Please help.