I was troubleshooting multiple hard drives my XP box, now that I am done, and there is just my original hard drive in the box (I had up to four at a time), it takes 1 minute longer for my comp to boot. I verified using bootvis that the "disk" part of my bootup is taking one minute, before any other processes begin. I am almost 100% sure that this is due to all the drives I installed/uninstalled. Any ideas how I can fix this issue?
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XP boot after multiple hard drive install/uninstall
- Thread starter Boozer
- Start date
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- #3
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- #4
Check youre Bios again.
The best is if you now the configuration of your attached devices on both IDE controllers (Mainboard). Wich one is attached to what IDE controller. Presume you have de IDE disk as a master attached to the Primairy IDE controller.
Then you only need to enable IDE0 in the Bios.
Set all IDE ports to disable, (the one's you don't use). If the stay on Automatic, the IDE interface are checked to see if there is a drive atached.
Then see if your CDroms are working, normaly there is no need to enable an IDE in the bios for CD-Rom.
esreverse
The best is if you now the configuration of your attached devices on both IDE controllers (Mainboard). Wich one is attached to what IDE controller. Presume you have de IDE disk as a master attached to the Primairy IDE controller.
Then you only need to enable IDE0 in the Bios.
Set all IDE ports to disable, (the one's you don't use). If the stay on Automatic, the IDE interface are checked to see if there is a drive atached.
Then see if your CDroms are working, normaly there is no need to enable an IDE in the bios for CD-Rom.
esreverse
Clean reinstall? As you've obviously been experimenting, I'm presuming no vital data on remaining drive.
Or, repair reinstall.
You could spend hours/days/weeks trying to find why boot time has increased. Reinstall a bit of a pain (specially clean as involves reinstalling all software too), but if it solves problem...
Or, repair reinstall.
You could spend hours/days/weeks trying to find why boot time has increased. Reinstall a bit of a pain (specially clean as involves reinstalling all software too), but if it solves problem...
- Thread starter
- #7
My bios is fine, as well as my master/slave settings on my drives. If I remember correctly, back in the Win98 days, if you installed a drive, then removed it, it would search for that drive for a default amount of time before continuing with the boot and there was just a simple *.ini edit needed to fix the problem that removed to pointer to the now non-existent drive(s). Clean install will fix it, I just plan on using it to test more drives, so, it will do it again and I would like to get that 1 minute back every time i boot the comp and find the root cause/fix to this issue
You could try to use msconfig to look for changes with or without the extra drives attached.
XP does not remove New Hardware when you remove devices from your computer. Try to Uninstall the device before you Remove it from the computer. So hook up the Drives again and then uninstall from the devicemanager. Then shutdown and remove the Drives.
XP does not remove New Hardware when you remove devices from your computer. Try to Uninstall the device before you Remove it from the computer. So hook up the Drives again and then uninstall from the devicemanager. Then shutdown and remove the Drives.
Therefore always make a rescue point before changing anything. Point back when finisch testing.
Maybey you want to have a dual boot XP, so you could use a seperate XP installation to test software and hardware, leaving your working version alone.
Good Luck;-)
Maybey you want to have a dual boot XP, so you could use a seperate XP installation to test software and hardware, leaving your working version alone.
Good Luck;-)
Try the steps in the KB article. It will show all hidden devices in Device Manager - more than the show hidden devices option. See if there are any listings related to missing drives.
- Thread starter
- #11
Thanks smah, that is what I was looking for, but did not solve my issue 
I performed the steps and found 8 hard drives that i had previously installed in the device manager. I uninstalled them all, but I still have the delay. I believe it is a disk config issue becuase BootVis.exe shows that exactly 60 seconds of my boot time are taken up by the "disk" initialization. during this time in the boot process there is no CPU usage at all and it just sits at the "Windows XP" logo screen with the blue bar scrolling. Any other suggestions from anyone that I might try?
I performed the steps and found 8 hard drives that i had previously installed in the device manager. I uninstalled them all, but I still have the delay. I believe it is a disk config issue becuase BootVis.exe shows that exactly 60 seconds of my boot time are taken up by the "disk" initialization. during this time in the boot process there is no CPU usage at all and it just sits at the "Windows XP" logo screen with the blue bar scrolling. Any other suggestions from anyone that I might try?- Thread starter
- #12
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