Computer takes long time to boot

Hello, I'm in need of some help with my computer, it boots very slowly. When I first turn it on, it displays the motherboard's logo for a long period of time. After that screen disappears and it starts to boot into the OS, which takes an even longer period of time to load. I've roughly timed it and it takes well over 10-12+ minutes from the time when it's 'powered on' until it loads whatever operating system. This problem is getting progressively worse over time. I've installed multiple operating systems over the last week (Fedora Core 6, Windows XP, and Windows Vista) which means that I've repartitioned/formatted my HDD, but the problem is still there regardless of whatever OS I'm using.

As of right now, I'm dual-booting with Windows Vista Ultimate and Fedora Core 6. (Using GRUB)

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing my computer to boot so slowly? It really is a pain to wait over 15 minutes just to reboot it. Could it be a BIOS or hardware issue?

If needed:

Thanks,
-Corey

Either your HDD is FUBAR or the settings for your HDD in the BIOS is wrong. That's what I'd guess.

HAve you moved HDDs around recently?

Make sure that a hdd with the "master" jumper (either placed or removed depending on drive) is at the end of the ribbon cable. Slave is in the middle.

Check optical drive ribbon cable and jumper settings also.

I had this happen once and I counted 75 passes of the windows bar before OS loaded. Fixing that fixed the problem.

If that is not the problem then as mentioned, possible HDD or IDE controller failure.

I'm with them on the check your bios setup. I have the same board and my rig takes less than a minute to cold boot.
12 minutes to boot means something is not right for sure.

What version bios are you running?

Yeah the jumper on the HDD was set for "Master with slave" which makes sense because a while ago I took out my second HDD for a friend to use. I appreciate the help =) Now my computer boots the normal speed as it did before.

not sure if it's still needed be my bio version is
1002.002
Which is American Megatrends.

-Corey

cking15 said:

Yeah the jumper on the HDD was set for "Master with slave" which makes sense because a while ago I took out my second HDD for a friend to use. I appreciate the help =) Now my computer boots the normal speed as it did before.

not sure if it's still needed be my bio version is
1002.002
Which is American Megatrends.

-Corey

Click to expand...

Good to see you got it working right. I was just wondering on the bios version because you have Vista on there
I think the lastest bios is version 1009. Don't really know if you need it or not.