Long delay at Windows XP startup

Hi all, I've got a very annoying problem with my Windows XP bootup which hopefully someone can help me with. I installed Windows XP Pro OEM onto a newly partitioned and formatted hard drive, but each time Windows boots up there is a delay of 10 minutes. The delay occurs just after the PC checks the floppy and CD-Rom drives for bootable disks. The PC will hang on a black screen for 10 minutes and then proceed to load Windows XP, first showing a row of white/grey progress bars at the bottom of the screen and then showing the Windows loading screen. XP seems to work fine once it's loaded, but the 10 minute wait is driving me mad! I'm using the following hardware:

Abit KG7-Lite Motherboard
128MB DDR-RAM
ATI Radeon Graphics Card
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 16
AMD Athlon 900MHz

The problem started with the first reboot during Windows setup and happens every time I start Windows XP. Any ideas on what could be causing this?

Thanks in advance.

 

Hi davisyn, Welcome to TSG !!
At boot up , depending on your system, press either:
F2, Delete, or some other key to get into BIOS. Usually you can see a message that says " press this key to enter setup"
When you get into BIOS, look in Boot Sequence or similar
Have it boot only the hard drive, or C:\ however the option is.
If it lists : First, second, third boot device, just have C:| drive or hard drive in first, and none in the other two.
Save your changes and boot up. See if that helps.

 

how fast does it boot in safe mode

 

Wow, thanks for the fast replies!

dai: it takes just as long to boot in safe mode, there is a 10 minute delay before the Boot.ini ARC path is displayed

TW56: I think I tried changing the BIOS boot options, which didn't help, but I'll try again to make sure when I get home from work.

 

most likely h/w problem if you are on a network turn it off and see what happens

 

I'm not on a network but I did try disconnecting my generic dialup PCI modem. I thought that this might be causing a h/w or driver problem because it had not been recognized in XP's device manager, but this didn't have any effect on the boot delay.

 

check the device manager for any yellow marks along side of anything
leave the h/d but pull the power plug from cd ect. one at a time and see if it boots normally

 

Look at the event viewer for any errors

 

dai: The only device that had a yellow mark was my PCI modem which had been detected as a 'simple communication device', I uninstalled this from device manager and took out the PCI card but it didn't seem to help the delay any.

TW56: I removed all other devices from the boot device options in the BIOS as you suggested, and also disabled the 'boot from another device' option, but I was still met with a 10 minute delay after POST.

MFDnSC: I looked in the event viewer but couldn't see any errors around the time of bootup, not exactly sure what I'm looking for in there though!


I noticed on my last bootup that the hard drive activity light comes on just after POST and I can hear the drive being accessed during the 10 minute delay, as though the drive is searching for the Windows installation. I've tried re-installing Windows but the problem remains.

 

Go back into BIOS, see if there is an option for QuickBoot and enable it..
Also when you are in windows, right click on my Computer, Properties, Click on the Hardware tab, Hardware profiles, At bottom set the " Select the first profile listed if I dont slect a profile in" to 4 seconds. Hit OK
Next go to Advanced Tab, Startup and Recovery, uncheck "Display list of Operating Systems for " box.Make sure XP is in the box. Hit OK, then Apply, OK and reboot see if that helps.

 

if that does'nt work go into msconfig/startup and untick all the boxes reboot and see if it boots normally
did you try disconnecting the cd ect.

 

Problem sorted! I re-partitioned the hard drive and set up a dual-boot system with Win98 & XP, and for some reason I can now boot into both OS's without any delays!

Perhaps the problem was that it was searching the hard drive for other OS's to boot from?

Thanks for your help and suggestions guys, a dual-boot was what I was after anyway but I just wanted to test that the XP installation was working OK on its own first.