got windows on but seems to take abit for it to load into windows from the Boot screen Got 768 mb ram intel p4 1.8ghz ibm deskstar 40gb 550 power supply nvidia g-force 2 64mb agp 16x dvd rom 52X32X52 cd-rw anything i can do to speed the load up but it is one of the first HDS i had 2000/2001 it is prob showing age The simplest solutions are the best and they are often save you money

hello do you defragementate often if no then DO, check for viruses, run Tuneup utilities 2006 if none of this helps the UPGRADE good luck Damian Cole Pentium4 3.20ghz@ 3.7ghz 1Gb Crucial XMS PC3200CL2 1 X 80GB HDD OS 2 x 250gb NVDIA GeForce4 MX4000 Pro ASUS P4-U800-X 600w PSU 12v 1-14amp 2-15amp WinXp

How long does it take? One to two minutes is probably average, depending on what's in the startup list. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

Your startup time cn be affected by several other things other than the hard drive. I was once using an IDE Card to support some additional drives. My PC would take 45 seconds to 1 minutle LONGER to boot up with that card even when I had no drives attached. One thing you could try it start in safe mode with the option to "see" all the operatinons taking place (I think there is a way to do this in normal boot as well, but not sure). You should then be able to see which steps in the boot process are taking a long time to complete. Michael J

Your 40gb hard drive must be connected to an 80 wire data cable, not a 40 wire one, to achieve it's maximum speed. If you have just upgraded from 2000 or Win ME or below, Windows XP will not boot as fast as it did for those Op systems. You must load the mboard chipset drivers after you have run Windows Setup the first time, and after any time you load Windows from scratch, so that Windows has all the proper information about your mboard. If you did or do not do that, your hard drive controllers may not be detected correctly, and your hard drive will not be set to run as fast as it can if that's the case. Sometimes Windows does not detect the capabilities of a hard drive correctly and sets it to a lower mode - see this to make sure it's in the fastest mode it is capable of - it should be at least DMA 4. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devic...

"Drive index - 22mb/s Random access time - 25ms as oppose to the reference of the same drive with 29mb/s and 12ms respectly " "...ATA100 cable, on master, UDMA mode 2(maybe something here??)" Yes, something there! Your UDMA should be at least 4 (UDMA66 - 66mb/s max.), if not 5 (UDMA100 - 100mb/s max) or 6(UDMA133 - 133mb/s max). Unplug the computer, check your 80 wire data cable for the drive for damage - it's common for wires to be broken, especially while removing a connector, often at the edges of the cable right at a connector. If in doubt replace the 80 wire data cable. You must load the mboard chipset drivers after you have run Windows Setup the first time, and after any time you load Windows from scratch, so that Windows has all the proper information about your mboard. If you did or do not do that, your hard drive controllers may not be detected correctly, and your hard drive will not be set to run as fast as it can if that's the case. Sometimes Windows does not detect the capabilities of a hard drive correctly and sets it to a lower mode, or if you are having problems with a drive or it's data cable connection, Windows will set the drive to a lower mode after a certain threshold of data errors has been exceeded - see this to make sure it's in the fastest mode it is capable of - it should be at least DMA 4. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devic... If you find you cannot get it to go into at least a UDMA 4 mode for the hard drive, that means Windows has inserted lines into the Registry to keep that drive in the lesser mode. I can tell you which lines to edit so that you can use the proper mode for the drive and be able to burn cd's again, but if your drive is still having problems (or if there is something wrong with your data cable connection), XP will eventually set it to the lesser mode again. To test your hard drive, AFTER you have checked all of the above, see the latter part of response 4 in this: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w... The "overtop" Setup part does not apply to you. Western Digital hard drives are warranteed for 3 years. If you're not sure, or have no proof of, when you bought it, you can plug in the serial number from the drive on the Western Digital web site to find out if it's still under warranty.

Oops - last post put in the wrong thread.