Long delay on boot between POST and XP Progress Bar

[JimS]

I changed out my Mobo for an exact duplicate make and model (Intel D875PBZ),
with duplicate BIOS, etc. Ever since doing that, there's a roughly 160
second delay from the time I hear BIOS confirm POST with a single BEEP and
the time I see the low-res progress meter sweep across the screen as XP
begins to boot. I'm running XP Pro and booting from the C:\ drive (Primary
Master IDE).

I've tried messing around with all of the settings in BIOS I could think of.
E.g., I've set it up so that the C:\ drive was the only POSSIBLE boot device
(removing floppy's, opticals, USB devices, etc.). I've flashed, reflashed,
and reflashed again the BIOS to the latest version, but nothing helps.
Interestingly, when I do boot from a floppy (e.g., with memtest86 on it),
there is no such delay. Spinrite tells me that my C:\ drive is completely
healthy. I've run it and scandisk and defrag on it, all to no avail. Of
possible interest, once it DOES start to boot, it performs normally. No
noticeable change in performance or any weirdness.

Any ideas of what I should try next?

Thanks,
JS

 

[Gerry]

JS

Any relevant reports in Event Viewer?

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[sgopus]

Since the MB is same model and brand, I suggest it's possibly a different CPU
ID, hard to say however, one suggestion is to perform a repair install to
ensure the CPU is id properly, and I strongly urge you not to be flashing the
BIOS unless something is broken badly, not just a delay in booting.

It's clear why the floppy is faster, less is loading. windows is much bigger
and takes much longer to load. plus the drivers.

 

[JimS]

Thanks Gerry and sgopus for the suggestions. In typical "take the car to the
mechanic" fashion, I powered it up last night for the first time in a couple
of days, and it booted instantly. So, thanks guys, you fixed it!

But seriously, I didn't change a thing since the last time I booted it, and,
voila!, this time it worked. There may be some lurking physical problem
(cooling/thermal, grounding, CPU on its last legs) or even a power supply
problem (although I swapped that too a few days ago and it didn't matter).
But for now it's working and I'll keep my fingers crossed. And back up
frequently.

JS