Serious issue on bootup (hard drive related... I think)

[Asthuran]

Alright, I'm not 100% on what the problem is, but I'm 90% sure, and I appreciate any help you guys give me on solving this.

I recently had my computer formatted. Getting to the point, everything was working perfectly, it was booting up extremely smoothly, the drivers were all working, then I was updating my computer with microsoft windows updates, specifically the Service Packs up to service pack 3.

However, during one of the updates that required me to restart, my computer took an extremely long time to boot up, (15 minutes or so), and it became extremely slow and laggish at the first load screen on boot up where it says:

Auto-detecting 3rd Master OR/AND Auto-detecting 3rd Slave.

Now my guess is something somehow got changed here, and my hard drive / CD drive should be booting on a primary instead of a 3rd, but honestly, I'm not too sure, and even if this was the problem, I don't know how to change those things.

If any of you can give me some assistance, it would be greatly appreciated, as these 15-20 minutes boot times are killing me!

 

[gwailo247]

Did you finish the updating process, and the 15-20 boot time is for regular start of Windows, or are you still stuck in the update cycle?

I haven't played around with XP in a long time, but on my Vista PC when I was doing a clean install, a few of the updates would not get installed via the Windows Update process, and the computer got stuck on a long load/reboot loop similar to what you are describing. Eventually I isolated which updates were causing the problem, and then manually installed them via the MS website and the problem was fixed.

 

[Asthuran]

Hmm, well that could pose a bit of a problem considering I don't know how to detect which updates didn't get fully installed.

It was the second batch of windows updates, it was a pack of 14 files.

And no, 15 - 20 min boot time isn't normal for me lol, my comp starts in 60 seconds usually. When I'm booting, it gets stuck at this Master/Slave auto-detect spot for a few minutes, then it goes to a blank black screen with a blinking white _ cursor at the top left of the screen, then my computer beeps for about 10 seconds, then i'm stuck there for a few minutes, then it slowly finally loads and yeah lol.

 

[gwailo247]

So you're done with the updating, and now after the updating your computer boots slowly? It makes a difference if you're still in the middle of updating or not.

You can check which updates were installed in the Windows Update, it will show which ones are failed.

If assuming that updating has been completed and now you have this problem, you can go into the BIOS. Find out which model of motherboard you have, and if you don't have the manual, go to the site and download it. There it will show you where to go to the boot section, and you can select the boot order of devices.

What you should also do is double check all the cables, make sure they're tight. If that does not help, then try disconnecting every other drive except the boot drive and see if the problem still persists.