[Asthuran]

Alright, I'd like to thank anyone here in advance for their help, it's much appreciated.

So I recently had my computer formatted at a shop, everything was working perfectly when I brought it home, it booted up normally. I went to microsofts site to update my windows XP, after the first update it made me restart, everything was fine, then I installed a pack of 14 files for the next update, it asked me to restart, I did, and THIS is where my problems began.

Suddenly on boot up, the first screen that loads says "Auto-detecting 3rd Master, Auto-detecting 3rd Slave". At this screen, it takes 5 minutes or so to get through it, and the only two options I have here are to press Del to open the setup which gives me access to the CMOS setup, among other things... Now in my CMOS setup, it says that nothing is detected on my primary and secondary, and that on my third, my IDE harddrive is detected as the master, and my cddrive is detected as the slave.

I've thought about this myself, and I'm 100% sure the cables in the tower are plugged in perfectly fine, absolutely NOTHING changed hardware wise when this happened, so it has to have something to do with the update, or something that changed internally.

The Master/Slave screen is also extremely LAGGY, in fact the entire boot up process is laggy... for example when I go into the whole setup area after pressing DEL, if I click the up or down arrow to choose a category to go to, it takes like 2 seconds for the system to actually respond to my arrow command, and everything is really laggy until it finally boots up.

Back to the story... after 5 minutes or so (if I just let the bootup run it's course), it gets passed the master/slave screen and goes to a black screen with a blinking white _ cursor, then after 30 seconds or so my computer starts to beep for about 10 more seconds, then I'm stuck at this screen for about 5 minutes, and then windows eventually loads up and works.

Any help would be appreciated with this, because I think it might be affecting my computers performance overall.

Edited by Asthuran, 18 December 2010 - 03:19 PM.

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Howszit Asthuran? and Welcome to GtoG...

If you enter your CMOS change the drives that do not have anything connected to NONE, that should stop Auto detection on those channels. It sounds like your CMOS battery may have failed (?) because Windows updates would not reset your CMOS settings. Did your date and time change from the correct time? MB's will usually go back to their manufacturing date when the CMOS gets reset. What is the motherboard? How old is your system?

Hope this helps....

[Mark D]

Howszit Asthuran? and Welcome to GtoG...

If you enter your CMOS change the drives that do not have anything connected to NONE, that should stop Auto detection on those channels. It sounds like your CMOS battery may have failed (?) because Windows updates would not reset your CMOS settings. Did your date and time change from the correct time? MB's will usually go back to their manufacturing date when the CMOS gets reset. What is the motherboard? How old is your system?

Hope this helps....

[The Skeptic]

First, reset your CMOS by unplugging the power cord and removing the CMOS batteery for 10-15 minutes. Re-install, reboot, set time and date and see how things go.

[Asthuran]

When I enter my CMOS Settings, Primary Master/Slave and Secondary Master/Slave are "Not Specified", I can't change them to anything, there's no options when I go into any of those categories.

As far as my date goes, it hasn't been affected.

Since the Third Master/Slave work though, I doubt it's the CMOS battery, as my hardware are pretty brand new, and it's not like anything is actually malfucntioning, it just seems like something is offset.

Thanks!

[Asthuran]

@TheSkeptic

I'll give it a go, but I've never removed a battery or done most of what you said before, so it might take some time.

[The Skeptic]

That is simple if your computer is a desktop. Open the left side cover (looking from the front backwards). The battery looks like a wrist watch battery but larger. Remove it carefully. You must disconnect the power cord.

The problem you describe is quite confusing, so we have to start with basics. Resetting the CMOS is absolutely essential in your case. If that doesn't help then we move forward.

[Alzeimer]

Now in my CMOS setup, it says that nothing is detected on my primary and secondary, and that on my third, my IDE harddrive is detected as the master, and my cddrive is detected as the slave.

I was always under the impression and unless i am wrong that it is not recommended to have your IDE Boot drive connected with a CDdrive on the same IDE channel.

Are your Primary and Secondary SATA connections (Probably unless older board), if not you should change your Boot HD to your primary.

Try to unplug your CDdrive and leave only your Boot HD plugged to see if your BIOS Post (Master/Slave screen) reacts faster and is not lagging once you enter the setup menu.