Right after this computer finishes its POST, it accesses the hard drive for an instant, and then "hangs" for several minutes before loading Windows XP. This occurs before the splash screen becomes visible. And, after that initial "bump" of the hard drive, there is no more activity until the system "wakes up" after a few minutes - then it finishes the boot normally, and quickly.

If I begin hitting "F8" before the end of the POST, so that the keystroke is recognized before the system hangs, it will bring up the screen that prompts you for Safe Mode, VGA Mode, Last Known Good, etc. But when I try to select one of those modes, the computer just hangs and will not boot at all.

I have re-installed (including from another XP Pro CD), tried a different hard drive, fiddled with BIOS settings (disabled UDMA, etc.), with no results. I loaded Bootvis, but found nothing that gave me any clues. I've worn out KB searches and found nothing.

Unless someone has some magic answer, what I am really looking for is someone who can tell me the nature of the first one or two things that XP loads. Keep in mind that it gets far enough to show the "Safe Mode" screen, if I hit F8 in time. It is the next thing to load that hangs the system.

So you can still logon right? It just takes longer. Go to google and search for a program called BootVis. It's from Microsoft and it should be able to tell you what's causing the lagging time.

Kevin.

Kevin-
stop confusing people? if you would read what he said, he tryed it and did not display anything that helped, don't post if you cannot read the question

shime-
did u use bootvis to trace and optimize? that would help, also i would see something that is not a software problem, it seems to me like it is not accessing your hdd to quickly, make sure all your cable are seated correctly and that all the cables are good, the littlest things can scew things up bad, post back with results

Shime,
Mine does something similar where it seems to go off into never land for about 2 to 3 minutes on boot up. In my situation, it appears to be my network drivers for my local network. If I disable the network adapters and disable network sharing, my machine boots up in a heart beat. You might want to look at your network configurations & see if you have anything enabled that doesn't need to be.
Just a thought.
Scott