GA-X38-DS4 really slow boot times

Gentlemen

I have had my rig now for about 8 months, and for the love of me I can figure out why the boot times are really bad. If I start my P4 Compaq Evo (don’t ask) that I use for internet browsing and downloading and I start my main rig at the same time – guess who is in front by a friggen mile! The P4 takes about 4 blue bars for windows XP 32-bit to load, and my overclocked beast (lol) takes 9 complete bars to cycle through and only then is Windows up and running. But once im in Windows, holy smokes… .. She motors!

I am still using F1 BIOS, and latest drivers from Gigabyte.

I have one 150GB raptor at the moment, looking for another, have it setup using native mode and when installing Windows I didn’t hit F6 to specify additional drivers, it just went through the normal setup and install windows on a drive it found.

Have not update firmware on raptor – not sure what firmware it is at this stage.

Does this mean it’s not using the ICHR9 chipset – or is that only for RAID?

Would you guys be able to give me some pointers on what to try next?

Thanks

Have you taken a look at the "Event Viewer" in the Application and System logs to see if something is failing to boot and timing out? When it happens it can take awhile for the system to work through it/them.

Yeah, have looked at that.

Nothing strange happening? I thought it might be that fact that I am only using native mode. Not ACHI or RAID.

Would that make a difference on a sinbgle drive?

You may want to leverage the "msconfig" command, if you're using a Windoze OS. Selecting the "Startup" tab, you can determine applications which are running upon bootup. Deselecting all or a select few may determine the cause of your boot problem. Good luck.

Even with a fresh install of windows with nothing on it, and still really bad boot times.

I had a look at msconfig and nothing unusual was selected. What else would I be able to try gents?

Would I damage/lose data off the HDD if I have installed it with native mode, and then switched to ACHI. I have an OS (150GB Raptor) and data on a 500GB HDD.

I would be able to blow away the Raptor, switch to ACHI, re-install windows but then what would happen to the data drive.

Thanks