WinXP Pro: Boot Delay -- 2 Minutes of no activity?

[Rosenkavalier]

Hello. I've made all of the corrections I could find: bootvis, Services, MSConfig, Registry, etc. I've run bootvis's Optimize multiple times, I've killed and disabled all unneeded Services, I've killed unneeded Startup functions.

Even after all of those changes, I still have a 2 minute delay in the boot process. The total boot time is about 3 minutes. When I run a bootvis trace (after all of the optimization), it shows a 140 second period of no activity. No CPU activity, no disk activity, no driver activity or delay.

According to bootvis, three seconds after XP starts it starts the ATAPI driver (takes 1 second), pauses for 140 seconds, then starts the SCSIPORT driver (takes 2 seconds). (I have an older ASUS Athlon mobo with the secondary ATA133 IDE controller, which is treated by XP as a SCSI device.) This is my second machine: my first machine -- same mobo, also WinXP Pro -- doesn't have this delay. However, the first machine (no delay) doesn't have any drives on the secondary IDE interface, while the second one (140s delay) does -- and the SCSIPORT driver loads on both.

Can anyone think of any reasons for this? I'm kind of at the end of my rope. Thanks.

[Styx]

The reason is obvious. WinXP is not compatible with your hardware, it detects part incorrectly as a SCSI device. Try using a older OS like WinMe.

[Budfred]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

It seems likely that what Styx says is true, but I suspect you have more than the option for going back to bug laden WinME. First, have you checked for a BIOS update and latest drivers for your hardware? This might produce better compatibility than you have now. Secondly, you can probably just live with this delay and not reboot very often (or go fix a snack when you do reboot). Others may have other ideas, but it sounds like you have been quite thorough in looking for solutions already.

Budfred

[Rick]

I have seen the same thing happen when an older drive ( Possibly Near death ) IDE drive is connected to the ata100 Promise Controller in one of my systems.

It takes forever for the drive and controller to communicate and access the drive .
Does your drive on the ata133 have a firmware update available?
Does your onboard ata have an updated driver available ?

I have replaced a couple of XP Pro certified drivers with unsigned drivers because of better performance .. That may be something to look into.

It is also Normal for the other Win O/S to detect the Secondary/Raid Onboard IDE controllers as scsi
Under 98 Both my old systems list the promise controllers as Scsi

[mjc]

Rick brought up the point that it is normal for Windows to detect secondary IDE controllers as SCSI devices. Not only is it normal, it is designed to be that way...