30 second pause after POST

I recently attempted to use the Migrate feature to move to a my system to a new HD. It didn't work -- Windows would boot from the new drive, but right after the desktop appeared, the system would reboot.

I was still able to boot from the old drive with no problems. However, I noticed a strange 30-second pause after the BIOS post screen. The screen would be black, except for a blinking cursor for about 30 seconds, then the curson would suddenly jump down, and Windows would start normally.

I was able to restore an image of my system onto the new drive. That worked fine, and I am now booting off the new drive. However, I still have the strange 30 second delay. I checked the IDE cables and they are tight. There are no new devices plugged into the system.

The mobo is an old Pentium D845BG. There is not a lot of tweaking available in the BIOS. There is an option for the BIOS to delay detection of the hard drive(s); but it does not matter what value the delay is set at, there is still an abnormally long pause. In other words, if I set the delay for 5 seconds, it pauses for approx 30 seconds, and if I set it for zero, it pauses for approx 30 seconds. (I should do some exact timings.)

Any advice is much appreciated.

 

Hello N8wheel,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please check each partition of your hard drive by Windows utility:

- For Windows 9x please use Windows menu Start\Run
then enter the command "scandskw" and test all drives;

- For Windows XP please use Windows menu Start\Run, then enter the command
"chkdsk c: /r" "chkdsk d: /r" for every partition of your hard drive.

Please note that you will need to reboot your computer in order to scan the system partition.

If the problem still persists after checking the hard drive then please tell me if you made any changes to your hardware configuration after cloning your hard drive.

If that's not the case then please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post and send it to support@acronis.com along with the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Alexey

Thank you for your reply.

I recently replaced a PCI video capture card that I had removed from the computer. The 30 second delay went away.

Who knew?!

Again, thank you for your reply.

Nathan

 

You need to remove any device driver software before you remove the device from the PCI slot.
Windows/driver was probably hanging about for the 30 seconds trying to detect the hardware.