P4P800-E Deluxe - Slower to boot Win2K Server

[Jessica Loriena]

I've noticed that it is considerably slower to boot Win2K on my
P4P800-E Deluxe with Pentium 4 2.8 HT than in my other lower
performance systems. It takes about 20 more seconds until the logon
screen. My specs:

***************
Asus P4P800-E Deluxe
P4 HT 2.8 GHz (1 MB L2 cache)
RAID disabled
HT enabled (not officially supported on Win2K but works fine)
2x256 MB DDR 400 Samsung (Dual channel enabled)
80 GB ATA100 HD

***************
Other System:

Asus CUSL2-C
P3 866 MHz
No RAID / No HT
2x256 MB SDRAM 133 MHz
80 GB ATA100 HD

Both installations of Win2K have very similar options enabled. With HT
enabled, Win2K sees the system as dual processor. (Maybe this makes it
slower to boot??)

I know that higher specs isn't supposed to make Win2K boot much
faster, but SLOWER?? Does anyone know what may be wrong??

 

[Tim]

DNS and DHCP settings can do this.
If the server has a DHCP address then if no DHCP server is available when
starting, it will wait to time out.
If DNS is wrong, then IP can go fishing for servers and go the long route
until it too times out. So verify the IP configuration.

Indexing server can have an impact. I always have this disabled.
The CUSL2 machine is not such a slow machine really - we have a dual 866 and
it is quick and solid. The P4P800 should still be faster. HT should have
little impact - usually always more beneficial than detrimental.

Is there anything of note in your system or application event logs on the
slow system?

- Tim

 

[Jessica Loriena]

Thanks for your reply!

I have 2 net cards and I'll check if DHCP is enabled in either one of
them. I don't think there's a problem with DNS, but I'll check that
too. By the way, I'd like to mention that it only takes longer to BOOT
on P4P800. Other than that it's quite fast (faster than my CUSL2
system).

As for event logs, I don't see any performance issues during the boot.

I'll post back..

 

[Tim]

You might also have a raid controller or two configured that you are not
using.
EG If the Intel SATA RAID is configured and enabled in the bios and you not
using it, this will add a few seconds.

Disable those devices you are not using and not going to use - in the bios.

- Tim

 

[Bronney Hui]

Jess,

I hve the exact same setup and owned both the CUSL2-C and P4P800SE. There's
a trick I read from a mag on the slow boots. Don't ever play around with
DNS and DHCP settings unless you know what you're doing, leave them at
default. I don't know anything about DHCP btw.

What I do is give every NIC an IP even if you don't have to. In my case,
the onboard Marvell 10/100.

My Realtek 8139 is at 192.168.0.1 (as gateway) for Sygate proxy for my
roommate sharing connection.
My Marvell is at 10.0.0.15 to plug into my DSL modem. Which I don't have to
give it.

I find that if I don't specifiy an IP for the NIC that goes to the DSL
modem, boot gets slow.

Tim's reasoning on slow boot is correct though.


-bron