Strange issue: 20 seconds to POST on cold start?

Looks like your original idea was not the problem Pbolduc... I disconnected all of my loose USB connectors, my printer, keyboard and mouse so that no USB devices were connected to the motherboard in any way and the problem remained. I also found out that my Keyboard does not support PS2 adapters it seems, but no matter. So i did not try to disable USB legacy support in bios as my only Native PS2 keyboard is in storage at the moment but it would seem that is not necessary anyhow.

You mentioned at the end of your first post that "There is also another alternative". Pray tell...

if you have 2 sticks of ram take one out and boot your system and if it doesn`t boot properly replace the stick you left in and try again,after all you tried out it still points out to a flaky stick of ram,my 2 cents plus a few thousands pc fixed in the last 15 years

ill try that, though it might be painful as my 120mm cooling fan attached to my heatsink rests almost completely on top of the RAM, I think i can get it out w/o removing the heatsink itself...
Ill check back when I have pulled the modules.

I have the same issue on an older P4 computer with an Asus motherboard. Starts POST then gets to the detects drives, both SATA and IDE then a 30 second pause. This happens with every POST and not just a cold boot. I can live with this though as the system uses standby most of the time. I think my issue might be my two USB-Firewire PCI cards in the system. Do you have any internal cards or an memory card reader installed internally?

I did previously have a PCI sound card but I took that out with no difference in load time

I do have a wireless PCI adapter, and PCI-x video card (radeon x1800xt) on the motherboard as well.

At this point I would tear that machine down to cd and boot drive and start there.

Checked each Memory module individually by booting with only one stick loaded and noticed no change.

As far tearing down the system I cannot get booted without the video card as I dont have onboard video on this motherboard.
Up to this point I have booted with nothing attached but the 2 sticks of memory, the boot drive, the video card and the wireless adapter card. Ill try to pull the wireless card and boot without it later today maybe.

Time for work for me but so far I have no leads to follow despite the great effort of everyone that has posted here. I really appreciate all of the ideas so far everyone!

Could the USB, Firewire, and Audio front panel connectors that attach to the motherboard have anything to do with the lag?

Front Panel devices that plug into a USB header on the motherboard could cause your problems such a card reader. This should be unplugged as the bios would see this as a mass storage device and attempt to boot from it. I'm still thinking your problem is related to a usb peripheral as it typically always is the case. If not adjusting the BIOS hard-drive seek time would be something else to try. If not limiting the system memory to one stick would be a great test. Also when it hangs if you press the escape key on the keyboard does that speed up the POST process? Also try adjusting the IDE Detect Time Out to something lower than 25 seconds. This could also be caused by a hardware device conflict. Remove all pci cards and disable as many components in the bios as possible including: onboard sound, onboard COM & LPT ports, USB controller IE1394. Attempt to post again. Maybe even give us the motherboard model number and manufacturer so we can at least get more familiar with the type of system it is. Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.

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Originally Posted by pbolduc

Front Panel devices that plug into a USB header on the motherboard could cause your problems such a card reader. This should be unplugged as the bios would see this as a mass storage device and attempt to boot from it. I'm still thinking your problem is related to a usb peripheral as it typically always is the case. If not adjusting the BIOS hard-drive seek time would be something else to try. If not limiting the system memory to one stick would be a great test. Also when it hangs if you press the escape key on the keyboard does that speed up the POST process? Also try adjusting the IDE Detect Time Out to something lower than 25 seconds. This could also be caused by a hardware device conflict. Remove all pci cards and disable as many components in the bios as possible including: onboard sound, onboard COM & LPT ports, USB controller IE1394. Attempt to post again. Maybe even give us the motherboard model number and manufacturer so we can at least get more familiar with the type of system it is. Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.

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I believe the brown items have been addressed or do not apply, I can find no way to adjust IDE detect time out, I have already reduced the memory to one stick and posted with each etc..

Motherboard model was mentioned in the original post, however its a Gigabyte MA770-UD3 rev. 1

I could try disconnecting the USB Headers, there are 3 wires for the front panel total, one that supplies 2 USB, 1 wire for a firewire 400 and a remote headphone and mic jack wire

I have not tried pressing escape when it hangs, ill try that I suppose.

The only PCI component left is a Wireless card that I need to still try to boot without, I have a PCI express video card that I cannot boot without but that is the only other device attached to PCI.

Device driver conflict is a possibility I suppose but doesnt that only come into play in the OS?

I could disable onboard sound, onboard COM & LPT ports, USB controllers, IEEE1394 ports in bios and see if that helps

When I mention about a hardware conflict I am not referring to a driver conflict. Each device that is physically connected to the computer will obtain or use a resource assigned to it either by the system board or dictated by the hardware device itself during POST. Windows does not have to be running for a card to use motherboard resources. As long as it is physically attached to the system it’s in use unless disabled or removed from the system. Definitely try removing the wireless card. When you have stupid problems you need to suspect everything until the problem is resolved. Unfortunately a trial and error situation in this case.

Okay i've re-read the forum over again. The freezing that I am acustom to is right after post and before loading the OS off a boot drive. So... Since your delay occurs before the system even posts the only other thing this could be would be the Video card BIOS is taking longer than normal to load. Did you ever use a windows based utility to make configuration changes to overclock your video card? Have you ever made any changes to the video card at all?

Perhaps even changing the bios display adapter to PCI/E from onboard or AGP\PCI. Try resetting the BIOS to its factory defaults and if you can try replacing the video card with a temporary one. Perhaps something in the video card firmware is causing a problem.

Also... Another thing... When your fans fire up full throttle and don't quiet down for 30 seconds then it POSTS. This could be caused from a power management setting. The system might be trying to poll the fans and report back the temperatures of the chipset processor etc I've seen what asus calls Q-FAN cause similiar symptoms... If you have enabled any power management settings in the BIOS to monitor fan speed etc... disable them.

If you are comfortable with flashing the BIOS give that a try too however make sure you have the right model and revision for your motherboard.

Ok latest updates are as follows:

In bios:
Disabled legacy USB storage detect - no change
Disabled 2nd and 3rd boot device - no change
Disabled smart fan for CPU temperature (adjusts fan speed for temperature if on, always at max if off) - no change

I have flashed the bios to the latest non-beta version "F8" for my motherboard - there was no change when i did this.

I have not ever changed any settings on my video card, if i can get a hold of another video card then I would try it out but atm I don't have that option.


next is to disconnect the front panel remote connectors for 1394, USB and audio.

panel connectors disconnected - no change

Ill go disable the onboard connectors in bios

Onboard USB, 1394 and sound disabled - no change.
(I even needed to fish out my old PS-2 keyboard for this last one)

Next is to try and disconnect the wireless PCI card.

PCI wireless card disconnected - no change

As far as I can figure, the only thing left to check would be driver/resource conflicts or the motherboard itself, or the video card...

Anyone have a spare PCI-express video card in Utah, salt lake county area? lol