Adding a third drive slows down boot-up

[vlatko]

i have the following config:
abit an8sli
athlon 64 3500+
1gb ram
wd sata 250gb (master) with windows
seagate ide 120gb (master) no os
seagate ide 40gb (slave) no os (soon to be linux)

i have just added a third ide drive (40gb) an windows boot-up takes a long time. the first windows xp pro logo goes by really fast, lot faster than before the third drive was added. but after the windows welcome screen i can see my desktop load and then it just stands there for like 2 minutes, i can't open anything. if i open my computer i can't see any of the drives i get the rotating flashlight as if it is searching for something.

the first time it happened i thought it's normal, it's probably installing the new hardware. but after it completed and the disk was succesfully installed, i can use it and everything, i rebooted and got the same problem. after the welcome screen i have to wait for like 2 minutes to be able to work.

what could be the cause to this? it's a new disk, i used it before on another computer and it works normally.

 

[vlatko]

if i unplug the new disk windows boots up normally as before.ok

now the strange part. if the new disk is connected again i get the slow boot up. however if i disable my local area connection and reboot windows boots up normally!! how can that be? what does the local area connection have to do with the new added disk? i can't disable my local are connection cause i use pppoe and i need to connect to the net.

 

[vlatko]

it's not a faulty ide cable as well. i have just tried some switching and replacing the whole cable as well.

 

[vlatko]

this is so strange... it's definetly not the cable, or the disks. i just unplugged my 120gb ide disk and left only the sata(windows) and the newly added 40gb ide disk. i get my usual fast boot-up in windows xp.

what is wrong? why can't both ide drives work together? does that make any sense?