[Katarn]

Hi,

I have just finishing building up a 2.4GHz (533MHz FSB) PC based on the Gigabyte GA-8PE800 motherboard + Gigabyte Radeon 9000 Pro II video card + 512MB 333MHz DDR memory. On booting, I find that the detection of IDE devices and everything from then on is extremely slow. I have to wait at least 15-20 seconds on bootup just for the 3 IDE drives to be detected.

I am currently in the process of installing the OS, and it has taken over half an hour thus far to do less than half of the 60GB Western Digital drive. The processor, RAM, bus speeds, memory speeds and so forth all seem to be detected correctly.

I just find it difficult to believe that such a system would take almost a full 2 minutes to be booting up just to the point of doing a CD-ROM boot for installing the OS.

I would appreciate any advice on what could be causing the problem/s.

Thanks,
Katarn

 

[SPEEDO]

Welcome to the forums Katarn.............

Is your processor a P4 2.4B...?

 

[Katarn]

Hi SPEEDO... and tnx for the welcome

Yep... my processor is a P4 2.4B.

 

[SPEEDO]

I would double check all of my Jumpers on the drives and make sure the blue end or off color end of the hard drives IDE cable is connected to the motherboard. The black end should be on the primary hard drive not the grey end.

Then I would clear the CMOS and set all of the IDE devices to auto detect then see how it boots.

What are you using for drives, 2 hard drives and a CD-Rom?

 

[Katarn]

Ok, I'll check the jumpers again. I have a 60GB drive on IDE 1 alone, and a separate DVD-Rom and CD-R/RW on IDE 2.

I have set up the jumpers initially to indicate the 60GB as being the master on the primary IDE. On the secondary IDE, I have the DVD-Rom jumper set to master, and the CD-R/RW set to slave.

I will check to see that the black end of the first IDE cable is hooked up to the 60GB drive. I was thinking of also just trying the other standard IDE cable to check if it at least boots up faster while being forced to ATA 33.

Auto detection happens always with this motherboard it seems.

Thanks for the help, will let you know how it turns out later

 

[Katarn]

Right... I checked all you suggested, and everything is working fine now! The IDE 1 cable had the grey connector plugged into the HDD instead of the black one. When I changed these, it still didn't want to work.

So I tried playing with the jumpers and changing it from Master to Cable Select. This seemed to somehow sort it out. Oh and it doesn't autodetect all the time as well, as stated in my previous post. I should read BIOS messages to press Enter instead of just PgUp/PgDown all the time... doh!

Thanks for all the help SPEEDO.

These forums look quite useful too, so I think I'll stick around :winkgrin:

 

[SPEEDO]

Oh and it doesn't autodetect all the time as well

Try another IDE cable, Just make sure it's the 80 wire like the one you have and not a 40 wire.