Help? P4P800 Really slow bootup - a lot of HDD activity before WinXP is usable...

  • Thread starter Thread starter William Cheng
  • Start date Start date
W

William Cheng

Hi all,

I've been noticing a problem get progressively worst - the time after bootup
which I can start using WinXP. The actual boot up is not that bad, and I
get my desktop quite quickly, however, the HDD activity light is going like
crazy, and I can hear my HDD working overtime for a while before I can
actually use WinXP. I have checked all the usual suspects like
Spy/Ad/wares, or virus and I perform regular mantenances such as disk
defrags on my HDDs. The most noticable jump in time to wait came when I
switched my system HDD to a secondary VIA RAID controller (which isn't being
used as a RAID) - to use my Intel ICH5 controller to control my ATAPI
optical drives (which my VIA controller doesn't support). This was
unfortunately the only way I can get all 3 of my optical drives running at
the same time. I checked that the VIA controller is transferring in UDMA5.
Once everything is running, everything seems fine - just the bootup time.

I am still on WinXP SP1a and my system specs are:

Intel P4 2.4Ghz HT enabled
Asus P4P800 Deluxe (w/2x 512Mb dual channel =1Gb)
Intel IDE:
Primary: Sony DVD-RW (DRU-530A) -master
Secondary: LiteOn CD-RW -master
Secondary: Pioneer DVD-A05 -slave
VIA IDE:
Primary: WD 120Gb (System) -master
Primary: WD 120Gb -slave
Secondary: Quantum 6.4Gb -master
SCSI:
IBM 4Gb HDD
Iomega ZIP removeable
SyQuest 200Mb removeable
ATI Radeon 9000
ATI TV-Wonder

p.s. I heard something a while back that the VIA controller might be the
cause?
Thanks,
Wm
 
Hi all,

I've been noticing a problem get progressively worst - the time after bootup
which I can start using WinXP. The actual boot up is not that bad, and I
get my desktop quite quickly, however, the HDD activity light is going like
crazy, and I can hear my HDD working overtime for a while before I can
actually use WinXP. I have checked all the usual suspects like
Spy/Ad/wares, or virus and I perform regular mantenances such as disk
defrags on my HDDs. The most noticable jump in time to wait came when I
switched my system HDD to a secondary VIA RAID controller (which isn't being
used as a RAID) - to use my Intel ICH5 controller to control my ATAPI
optical drives (which my VIA controller doesn't support). This was
unfortunately the only way I can get all 3 of my optical drives running at
the same time. I checked that the VIA controller is transferring in UDMA5.
Once everything is running, everything seems fine - just the bootup time.

I am still on WinXP SP1a and my system specs are:

Intel P4 2.4Ghz HT enabled
Asus P4P800 Deluxe (w/2x 512Mb dual channel =1Gb)
Intel IDE:
Primary: Sony DVD-RW (DRU-530A) -master
Secondary: LiteOn CD-RW -master
Secondary: Pioneer DVD-A05 -slave
VIA IDE:
Primary: WD 120Gb (System) -master
Primary: WD 120Gb -slave
Secondary: Quantum 6.4Gb -master
SCSI:
IBM 4Gb HDD
Iomega ZIP removeable
SyQuest 200Mb removeable
ATI Radeon 9000
ATI TV-Wonder

p.s. I heard something a while back that the VIA controller might be the
cause?
Thanks,
Wm
Click to expand...

Disable file indexing on the drives(Useless option) and also clean out
your Prefetch Folder in the windows folder.
Tips and tricks on here,
http://www25.brinkster.com/chirisoft/speedxp.htm
SpeedXP,
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
TweakUI for XP.
Disable unneeded services,
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/service411.htm
Disable hibernation unless you really want it also.

Loads more on here,
http://www.winxpfix.com/
http://www.tipsdr.com/

HTH :)





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Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
remove obvious to reply
email (e-mail address removed)
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http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm
 
I've been noticing a problem get progressively worst - the time after bootup
which I can start using WinXP. The actual boot up is not that bad......snip
Click to expand...

XP does a trick that gets many people. It shows the desktop long
before the system is done booting up. This is almost certainly what
you are describing. Sure a clean install starts faster since less
things are loading.
 
Thanks,

I will try to weed down some of my startup items and run the speedXP - as
well as turn off indexing (how do I turn off indexing?)

Thanks,
Wm
 
William Cheng said:
Hi all,

I've been noticing a problem get progressively worst - the time after
bootup
which I can start using WinXP. The actual boot up is not that bad, and I
get my desktop quite quickly, however, the HDD activity light is going
like
crazy, and I can hear my HDD working overtime for a while before I can
actually use WinXP. I have checked all the usual suspects like
Spy/Ad/wares, or virus and I perform regular mantenances such as disk
defrags on my HDDs. The most noticable jump in time to wait came when I
switched my system HDD to a secondary VIA RAID controller (which isn't
being
used as a RAID) - to use my Intel ICH5 controller to control my ATAPI
optical drives (which my VIA controller doesn't support). This was
unfortunately the only way I can get all 3 of my optical drives running at
the same time. I checked that the VIA controller is transferring in
UDMA5.
Once everything is running, everything seems fine - just the bootup time.

I am still on WinXP SP1a and my system specs are:

Intel P4 2.4Ghz HT enabled
Asus P4P800 Deluxe (w/2x 512Mb dual channel =1Gb)
Intel IDE:
Primary: Sony DVD-RW (DRU-530A) -master
Secondary: LiteOn CD-RW -master
Secondary: Pioneer DVD-A05 -slave
VIA IDE:
Primary: WD 120Gb (System) -master
Primary: WD 120Gb -slave
Secondary: Quantum 6.4Gb -master
SCSI:
IBM 4Gb HDD
Iomega ZIP removeable
SyQuest 200Mb removeable
ATI Radeon 9000
ATI TV-Wonder

p.s. I heard something a while back that the VIA controller might be the
cause?
Click to expand...

I suspect that setting your DVD-RW to primary master may be the problem.
The system wants to find that as the boot device. It's not happy having to
look elsewhere for the boot device.

Also, having SCSI devices in the machine will slow down your bootup. Do you
really need all that stuff in that box? Looks to me like you could easily
lose all the SCSI drives (obsolete) as well as that 6 Gig Quantum (also
obsolete). Pare that sucker down to the pair of WD 120s in a RAID
configuration, and no more than 2 DVD-RW drives and it should _fly_!

BTW, be very careful about the jumper settings on your drives. E.g.,
there's a huge difference between "master+slave" and "master".

Tom S
 
William Cheng said:
Hi all,

I've been noticing a problem get progressively worst - the time after
bootup
which I can start using WinXP. The actual boot up is not that bad, and I
get my desktop quite quickly, however, the HDD activity light is going
like
crazy, and I can hear my HDD working overtime for a while before I can
actually use WinXP. I have checked all the usual suspects like
Spy/Ad/wares, or virus and I perform regular mantenances such as disk
defrags on my HDDs.
switched my system HDD to a secondary VIA RAID controller (which isn't
being
used as a RAID) - to use my Intel ICH5 controller to control my ATAPI
optical drives (which my VIA controller doesn't support).<<<<<<<
Click to expand...
This was unfortunately the only way I can get all 3 of my optical drives
running at
the same time. I checked that the VIA controller is transferring in
UDMA5.
Once everything is running, everything seems fine - just the bootup time.

I am still on WinXP SP1a and my system specs are:
Click to expand...

XP is hunting for things that you moved.
 
Oh, that makes sense, is there anyway to tell XP where everything is now
manually, instead of having it hunt everytime it loads up?
 
Its taking me around 1minute 10seconds to load WinXP to get a desktop

But when I get the desktop - the HDD grinds on for another minute before I
can really use WinXP

So total time is around 2:10 or 2:20 for boot up (how does this fair - my
laptop certainly boots up and is usable in 40-50sec)
 
William said:
Oh, that makes sense, is there anyway to tell XP where everything is now
manually, instead of having it hunt everytime it loads up?
Click to expand...

If no drive letters changed then everything is where it should be.
 
William Cheng said:
Its taking me around 1minute 10seconds to load WinXP to get a desktop

But when I get the desktop - the HDD grinds on for another minute before I
can really use WinXP

So total time is around 2:10 or 2:20 for boot up (how does this fair - my
laptop certainly boots up and is usable in 40-50sec)
Click to expand...

I haven't seen any mention of how much RAM you have. If you are short of RAM
it could cause a lot of disk thrashing because of swapping.
 
you shep haven't seen you since looking around the elitegroup newsgroup.
i've still got my k7s5a.
 
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