ok, my system just started acting weird.
i have xp, havent formatted in 9 months, ran like i just installed it, took really good care of it
now i tried booting, and it took about 5-6 minutes (normally takes ~40 seconds)
so i tried a whole bunch of things, ended up formatting.
after formatting, it STILL did this. so then i thought maybe its a hardware problem. took out everything, booted with barebones, it worked fine. added in sound card, worked fine. cdrom drive..fine..then i added in my 2nd drive (i have 2 drives, 1 reg cdrom, another cdrw). this drive is on secondary master. i put it in, works fine. i boot up, the system is slow again. then i take it out, works fine. put it in, works fine..next reboot its slow.
so i took out the drive. and it works fine. until now. its bootign up slow again. i put my old dvd drive in, and that worked fine. now i disconnected it, still boots up slow. now i think maybe its my 2nd hard drive. so i took that out, still boots slow.
my system specs:
athlon xp 1700+
shuttle kt266a mobo
256mb kingston ram
aopen 56x cd rom
lite-on 24x10x40 cdrw
maxtor 60gb
wd 10gb
visiontek gf4 ti4400 (o/c)
dlink 10/100nic
sb audigy
so what do you think the problem is? its very very frustrating, its almost 230 am and ive been tryign to work it out all day. *sigh*
tomorrow ill run a diagnostic on my maxtor 60gb, maybe theres something wrong with the drive. i built the comp, ive had it for well over a year now, i dont understand what it is. im pretty sure its hardware, because even aftera full format + reinstall of windows, it did it.
perhaps theres something wrong with my mobo's IDE channels?
gonna post this over at anandtech too. thanks guys.