Boot Delay

In news:jncftt$ltb$,
Kernelbugger wrote:

I'm unable to figure out why one of my HDDs takes only two sweeps of
the bullets across the WindowsXP screen during boot up, and another
takes up to 15 sweeps. I'm referring to the blue buttons that sweep
horizontally right after POST. I ran fixmbr and fixboot and the
number of sweeps was unchanged. I plan on running boot log to look
for the culprit, but I thought I had it figured because the two-sweep
HDD was on SATA port 2 and the 15 sweeper was on SATA port 5. I
swapped which port the drives were on, and the 15-sweeper now takes
only 2 sweeps. Next I cloned the 2-sweeper and the clone took 15
sweeps to boot on SATA port 2. I'd like a reference to what Windows
XP is doing when it first starts to load after the POST. Or is that
exactly what bootlog will tell me? TIA
Asrock 890FX Deluxe 4, 4-core 3.6 GB CPU, 2x2 MB 1600 MHz RAM,
Windows XP Pro, and HDDs of 500 and 1 TB.

Whoa wait a minute! Sweeps of the bullets across the Windows XP screen?
I think I know what you are talking about and I don't think that counts
for anything. As lots of things can change that and that doesn't mean a
problem. As I think the only purpose is to show it isn't hung up and the
computer is frozen. So any movement means it is still working and
everything is good (or good and slow).

What does help is how long it takes to boot up. Although this is often
misleading as well. Some count when the desktop pops up. Others like
using something else. I like using the time when the disk activity stops
to almost nil and the CPU usage drops to idle. This time is the longest
of the longest of course.

So how long does it take before everything is snappy like you had it
running at idle for 10-15 minutes or so? Then we are getting somewhere.

Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3