Shell Hardware Detection Issue after SP2 install

[Mark Turnbull]

I have just installed SP2 on my machine (AMD Athlon 2200 running XP Pro)
and now it takes for ever to start-up. It starts then get to the
wallpaper then sits there for what seems an eternity (probably abut 5
mins), eventually you get some Icon that are blank then after about 15
minutes some start to refresh. The task bar is not available during
this time.

By going through a process of elimination with Msconfig I have
identified that all is well if I disable the Shell Hardware Detect
service. Anybody seen this or got any ideas?

I suspect this was a problem before SP2 as it has for sometime been slow
to boot but not that slow!

 

[Mark Turnbull]

Sorry to follow up my own message, but it was much worse than I thought.
IE and Explorer both screwed up, the update some how managed to switch
off System Restore.

So the only way was a clean install followed by Windows update before
installing everything else. That worked! Good Job I did backup before
installing SP2.

 

[Gongoozler]

Sorry to follow up my own message, but it was much worse than
I thought.
IE and Explorer both screwed up, the update some how managed
to switch
off System Restore.

So the only way was a clean install followed by Windows update
before
installing everything else. That worked! Good Job I did
backup before
installing SP2.

In message <[email protected]>, Mark
Turnbull

Hi Mark. I have been trying to resolve this same problem on a computer
for a friend. What I’ve found so far is that it is caused by an ATAPI
time-out. If yours is the same, you will see in the event viewer that
at the time of the prolonged boot-up there are several of these ATAPI
timeouts. From what I’ve found so far, it appears that SP2 is much
more aggressive in the timeout setting, so an ATAPI interface that was
ok before SP2 fails with SP2. The fault could be a CD drive that takes
a long time to respond or to the motherboard ATAPI interface. The next
stage in my investigation will be to try booting without the cd
drives connected. A further effect of this error is that after several
failed attempts to communicate with the cd drive, Windows changes the
drive mode from DMA to PIO.