long delay between power-on and boot-up

[GungaDin71]

When I hit the power on my Athlon 1700 system there is a delay of anywhere from
ten seconds to several minutes before it beeps and starts booting. During this
period the monitor stays on standby, the LED on the cd-rw will
blink-blink-blink-blink-blink...pause...repeat, and often the HDD light will
join in too. I've tried starting it after disconnecting the cd-rw...no
difference.

Once it's booted up, it's totally stable and performs very well. Never
crashes, no problems at all. Only the boot is odd.

Doesn't matter if it's starting cold or restarting, happens EVERY boot.

Now, I just replaced the Athlon 1700 with a 2400, and the problem is not only
still present but even more obnoxious...routinely taking several minutes to
start booting. Still no other problems.

AOpen AK75E mainboard, 512mb pc2100 memory, Radeon 7500

Thanks in advance for any advice...

Ed

 

[D]

Man,

The only thing I can think to try is to powerup with MBC (minimum bootable
configuration) and see if your boot time improves and or discover which
component is delaying the process. To powerup with MBC, unplug all of your
drives, remove all PCI cards, and unplug your keyboard & mouse. The only
thing you should have left is: motherboard (with RAM, processor, heatsink &
fan) and video card (with attached monitor).
Now, try powering up. Don't worry, you will undoubtedly get errors in the
form of beeps or text during the boot process. And, the boot process will
halt or stop almost immediately. The point of this is to determine if you
can start the boot process normally. If so, then you know one of the
components you unplugged or removed is the culprit. If not, then you know
that either your motherboard, RAM, processor, or video card is to blame. At
least you will have narrowed it down. Oh yeah, to power down from MBC, push
(and hold) your power button until the system turns off. This could take 4-8
seconds.

Post back and let us know what happens,


D.