Raptor loading crappily.

[Schalldampfer]

Ok... I turn on my Sony VAIO with and IDE HDD, about the time I turn my single-36gig-Raptored (funny adjective, that) HDD, and the Sony VAIO loads up MUCH faster than the Raptored computer... what's up with that? I thought it would only take seconds to load Windows XP on a Raptor...

[Como]

any one of thousands of things could cause this....what are the cpu speeds, ram amounts, and is windwos even installed on the raptor? (dumb one, i know...but i gotta make sure)

also, what areeach loading? windwos computers have a funny way of accumulation a ton of **** that loads up with windows, and it doesnt take long.

[warlock110]

if the computer spec and what's on it are different they are different, a raptor is very fast, if u did a fresh install of window on it and a fresh install of window in the Vaio, then you can compare, most laptops comes with 5400rpm drives which isn't as fast, your vaio might have a 7200 drive though, but still not as fast as a raptor.

[Schalldampfer]

Alright, the Vaio's 1.6 ghz with 256mb RAM. My Raptor has an Athlon 64 3200 and 1gig accompanying it. And the amount of things they load are about the same. The speed of both boot up haven't varied since I last did a fresh install.

[Schalldampfer]

So, what now?

[austinbmxnig]

also its possible that the RAID card adds time to your boot

[tom10167]

It's really hard to say. This is where tons of practice in PC troubleshooting would come in to play, there's really no other way around it. Basically -- Check everything. Defrags? Scandisk? Virus? There are hundreds of open windows, the only way to find out which one is letting in a draf is by shutting all of them.

[Schalldampfer]

Defraged, Scandisked, Anti-virused, and all other cleaning junk. No avail. Perhpas my onboard VIA Raid controller is the fault?

[warlock110]

i would not trust Via, this sounds like a driver conflict, I have some experience with via board and they are very problematic in the drivers. I would try a different raid card if possible, check every possible way.

[Schalldampfer]

Well, there is that Promise RAID onboard. But don't get me wrong, VIA works fine after the boot up. Should I try switching to that Promise one? If yes, that'll take a lot of work to reconfigure...

[neonblingbling]

I thought boot-up speeds have next to nothing to do with start up speed... My craptacular emachine has a 5400rpm hard drive and 1.6 ghz and 512 ram, and will boot faster than my friends machine that was 7200 rpm, 2.4ghz, etc. Something about reconizing stuff or something...

[Schalldampfer]

Oh... right.. I guess peripherals do come into play... of which I don't have many... hmm... So should I switch to Promise? Will it make that big of a difference?

[Schalldampfer]

Anyone have an answer?

[Schalldampfer]

Still expecting an answer...

[DrSlinky]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of the early deterants from SATA how it attached to the system? I remember reading that early SATA controllers were simply added to the PCI bus, creating a bottleneck that made any performance gained over PATA negligible at best. If you're using a PCI bus based RAID controller, couldn't this be an issue?

[SimGuy]

Maybe there's a problem with the PCI Latency of your onboard SATA controller?

I know older VIA-based systems with PCI RAID controllers got improved read/write performance by tweaking the PCI latency, but I'm not sure if that would apply anymore (nor do I know how to do it).

[Schalldampfer]

I'm not using a PCI controller. It's an onboard VIA one.

[DrSlinky]

I'm not using a PCI controller. It's an onboard VIA one.

OK, then it's not PCI based. The onboard Promise RAID controller probably is, though.

I'll have to second, or third or fourth, what's already been said. Having some specs would make it easier to figure out.

[Schalldampfer]

Hmm... I thought the specs I had given was sufficient... well, here it is again: my main computer has 36.7gb Raptor, a 160gb WD SATA, both on VIA controllers, R9800 at stock with Zalman, A64 3200, and 1 gig RAM of some rather respectable brands. The Promise is onboard also; I haven't any occupied PCI slots. And my computer is clean.

[austinbmxnig]

i use the onboard promise and it works sweetly

[DrSlinky]

The onboard Promise is usually attached to the system through the PCI bus, unlike the VIA controller on the south bridge. That's why I asked.

What make is the board? Have you googled it and checked to see if the board is known for having any problems or quirks? Or could the board have enough options that all the extra drivers to load is slowing the boot process? Just trying to examine every possibility. The devil's in the details, or so they say.

[*jj]

why do you have raid installed and or running?..you only have 1 raptor correct? also the motherboards might go through post a bit differently. My abit takes a good 5 seconds just to get to the beep before post, compared to my old ECS(P.O.S.)You wanna see how fast the raptor is against the other. Load the same game in both rigs and start levels at the same time..see which one loads faster. You said the amount of things they load are about the same..make sure they are exactly the same. Go into your msconfig and shut everything down, then boot up. I think it just could be the motherboard posting a bit slower.

[Schalldampfer]

I don't have RAID setup and I'm pretty sure that the games will load much faster in the Raptor, but my problem is that the boot-up is so slow. And also shut-down, I should mention.

[Schalldampfer]

Any suggestions?

[DrSlinky]

I don't have RAID setup and I'm pretty sure that the games will load much faster in the Raptor, but my problem is that the boot-up is so slow. And also shut-down, I should mention.

Logically, everything that starts up during boot needs to be shut down before, well, shut down. It definately sounds like there's a lot running in the background.

Run the system information tool, and see what drivers, processes, services, etc., are being loaded. Compare it to the Vaio. At least that'll prove or disprove the additional software idea.

You could also do a windows install on an IDE drive if you have one sitting around, and try booting from that. If it doesn't boot up any slower, it could lay credibility to the flakey drivers suggestion.

[Schalldampfer]

Ok... it's the Windows that's so slow in loading... not the Raptor. And yes, I the shut down speed is also rather long... argh! I don't have that many backgroudn tasks running... Currently 34 processes... which I would imagine is normal.