Ok, I'm at my wits end...please help with this annoying problem

[soulrider4ever]

Ok, basically, heres the deal...this is driving me crazy, and I really dont know what else to do to fix this issue

I've got 3 harddrives... 2 are SATA, and 1 is on IDE slaved(DVD is master)

I installed xp on 1 of the sata drives, but I don't leave the IDE HD plugged in all the time as it's mainly for backup of data, and aside from that it's old and LOUD, so I like to unplug the power 90% of the time.

So, here's the weird part. If it's not plugged in, windows takes about 3-4 times longer to boot. The moment I have it plugged it, and boot up...bam windows is loading very noticeably faster. I've tested this quite a few times, and it's not just a fluke thing.

I've tried disabling as many startup items as possible and services disabled and still no luck.

It's as though windows is waiting to find the other drive, times out, and then continues booting. For IE - with the IDE drive in, my HDD light is on the entire time and I get right into windows, but when I take the drive out(which is most of the time), the light will be off for quite some time, ,and then startup again after awhile, then I'm in windows.

So, any alternatives besides always leaving the HD always plugged in or buying a new HD thats quieter ?

 

[tuskenraider]

Is plugging in the IDE drive changing the boot order in the BIOS possibly and the search for boot drive slowing things down? How about putting the DVD or hard drive on the secondary IDE channel so both can always be master on separate channels. Try each one that way. It also could be the changing/dectecting of two different UDMA modes on the same cable every time you reconnect the drive slowing things down. As always, you've triple checked the DVD jumper to make sure it is indeed master? Those are a start.

 

[soulrider4ever]

yes, its master, my mobo only has 1 IDE connector...and I'm sure it's something like that yes, I just need a fix!

 

[tuskenraider]

Well I've heard of a lot of issues with the Gigabyte boards with the add-on IDE(JMicron) controller. You might want to try changing the mode of the controller in the BIOS. I think there is options for Native, IDE, ACHI, etc. One of those might work out better for you than the current setting it's at.

 

[moz_21]

If you're not unplugging the IDE cable from the drive it will probably affect it.

 

[soulrider4ever]

None of the above have worked

 

[doublejack]

My guess is that your problem comes from Windows Device Manager and your hardware configuration. Because Windows is configured to use the drive, it's searching for it every time you boot up - attempting to load the driver and mount the volume. And when it's not there it's probably hung until the driver times out. I wouldn't expect that to take long, but it seems like it is for you.

If I'm right, the only way to solve the problem would be to either go into the device manager or the registry and remove the drive from your hardware configuration. That should solve the long boot up problem because Windows won't try to load the driver. However, the downfall of this is you'd have to go through removing the device driver after every time you reconnect the drive, because Windows is going to reinstall the driver every time so you can use it. And that means every time you go to use the drive, you'll probably have to boot windows twice (it'll find new hardware, install and then ask to reboot).

A more elegant solution would be to put the drive in an external enclosure and connect it via USB. Might be something for you to consider.

 

[youngbuck]

There is a program called WinXP Manager. In it there is a tweak to stop Windows from detecting all available hard drives at boot time. This may be what you need. Your OS may have a record of that IDE drive existing. Therefore, when it is connected, that record is fulfilled and boot resumes. If the drive is not connected, the OS tries to fulfill the record of that drive, and must time out, like you said, before boot resumes.

Just a theory, but I'd give that a shot.