Windows XP Pro takes 30 minutes to boot

[olihou]

Hi everyone,
I had this problem since the last 3 months and i still did not find any trace of solution. Here's exactly what happened.

At first, i had a 80 gig IDE hard drive and everything was working perfectly. Normal boot time, no bugs at all the only problem was the lack of free space so i decided to buy a bran new hard drive, Seagate Barracuda 250 gig SATA. (my motherboard supports SATA, ASUS P5GD1)

I decided to completely reinstall my system so i started a fresh install with my Win XP Pro cd. Everything worked fine (only 113 gig were detected but it's normal since Win XP does not support HD larger than 113 gig before SP2)

So i reinstalled everything rebooted the PC a couple of times and boot time was pretty fast. Then, i updated to SP2 and since then, it takes about 25-30 minutes to boot each time. I also tried to reinstall win XP but since it happened he first time, it takes up to 15 minutes to detect HD at installation with IDE and SATA. What's funny is once Win XP is installed, before the SP2 upgrade, it always has a fast boot time. As soon as SP2 is installed.... BANG 30 minutes boot time.

Here's what i have done to fix it:
Flashed the BIOS to the most recent version
Installed the most recent version of all drivers
Reinstalled a couple of times with always the same pattern
Booted in safe mode (it froze for 10 sec on mup.sys, more likely on what followed but i did not see it)

P4 3.2
P5GD1
nvidia 7600
2 gig

Currently inspecting hardware to find any defective parts

I'm starting to get a little desperate, please help me.

Thanks

 

[kimsland]

Reinstalled a couple of times with always the same pattern

So SP1 was ok, then SP2 upgrade not Ok?

Must be a driver issue with your hardware
Remove all USB addons, and any PCI cards internally

 

[gbhall]

I'm not aware of any 113Gb limitations. The one I remember was you needed SP1 to exceed 137Gb per partition (effectively this is moving to 48-bit addressing). Having said that this is not the first case of someone referring to a 113Gb as a limit.

First check you have the most updated bios. Second, if there are drivers required for SATA (supplied with your motherboard).

 

[olihou]

Can't believe i fixed it yesterday night

Wow, i fixed it...
Ok, first, thanks to all for your infos. I decided to remove all PCI and RAM, then put them back in (to make sure there was no bad contacts) Same thing for my EDI CD and DVD.

Then i booted in safe mode (same boot time than before) but this time i opened msconfig and choose "diagnostic startup". It booted in less than 10 sec, than i added system.ini than rebooted, win.ini then rebooted, etc. Each time, it took about 2-3 sec more to boot. Finally, now everything is enabled and it boots in less than 20 sec.

Wow, i feel stupid. I should have done this since beginning... Maybe i was afraid of boot time... I don't know what fixed it exactly, combination of both actions, the selective startup or moving hardware parts. The most important now is everything works !

thanks
Oliver

P.S. 113Gb is my mistake, it was 137Gb

 

[kimsland]

Thanks for the update

You can also use Startup Control Panel to remove any other not required startups

But its back to fast again

 

[Bobbye]

Since you know the way to the msconfig utility, check you Startup menu there. You should only ave the anti-virus program, firewall, touchpad for laptop and network process if on a network checked. NOTHING else needs to start at boot and run in the background.