Hi guys. First time I've been to this forum and I hope you can help. A friend of mine installed me a Compaq K8S-LA motherboard with AMD athlon 64 3000+ processor for me. I had just bought a new hard drive for my old set up (Seagate Barracuda ST3802110A 80G) which worked perfectly with my AB1T-KX7-333 motherboard. I only have a 6Gig hard drive other than this.
On my new system the hard drive takes up to 1hr to boot which is obviously a serious pain in the butt. I contacted segate about the hard drive and they suggest I need to either update my bios (impossible, there has only ever been 1 bios update since the board was released and I tried that) or buy an onboard pci/ide (?) cable to bypass my motherboard as they think it can't handle more than a 32G hard drive. Having checked online I have seen people running this system with hard drives with more than 200G hard drives.
I have been trying to sort this out for 2 weeks and am banging my head against the wall at every turn. I also can't get my p.c. to recognise my speakers which is a problem for a later date but may be related.
If you need further specs etc. then please let me know. Any advice you can give will be much appreciated as I think I may throw the bloody thing through the window any minute.
Thanks in advance.

Did you perform a clean install of XP on this new board?

Did you load the board drivers?

Thanks for the reply mate. I did a clean install on both hard drives, the larger one taking 3hrs to complete the 6gig one taking the regular time. This is the bit that makes me seem stupid. I have a disk with the drivers on but don't know which programme I need to install them or how to install them at boot. There are also other drivers on the disk (ie web cam, sound drivers etc) that were from the person who used to own the motherboard. How do I only install what I need? Thanks for the help...

K8S-LA (Salmon)
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/g...name=c00257657

HP does not list audio drivers for that board but they are very generic Realtek AC97.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...&Software=True

But first things first: How are your drives configured? Is the Seagate the Primary Master? Are you certain the jumpers are correct? It is strange that it took 3 hours to install XP.

I see that that drive is an Ultra ATA although I am not certain if that offers any problem to the motherboard.

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/...81,716,00.html

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/di...ra_ata100.html

You might want to try the Seagate Installation Software and or the Seagate Diagnostics and try reinstalling XP Clean.

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html

Thanks again for the reply. I have tried everything. I have just taken the hard drive to the store I bought it from and he tested it on the store PC. It works just fine on there. All I get is a black screenwith a white flashing cursor. If I leave it for 15 minuites the boot process begins very slowly. I asked him for an add on pci/ide controler and he looked at me perplexed. He said he's never heard of one, so can't order me one. I'm going to hide in a dark room and cry!!!!
I was using the seagate as master (with jumpers correct) and then tried as slave but still takes the same time. I'm currently using my 6gig drive which isn't exactly big enough.
I don't want to risk buying another hard drive if all of the larger ones do the same thing.
Your help is much appreciated. Sorry the responses come so late. I think I'm halfway around the world from you.

pci+ide+controller

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...ide+controller

I personally do not think this is an issue. That motherboard is fairly current. In general you would only need such a card on a very old motherboard using modern hardware.

That being said I will continue to ponder this this evening.

Have you tried you BIOS Boot Menu? Just the off chance that this drive is not set to boot? Yet that wouldn't explain the delay

Reeeaaaallly doing my head in now. I'll try a add on pci/ide controller and hope for the best. if your head scratching turns something up let me know or i'll post back when i've got it sorted.
It is set correctly in bios etc. It just doesn't make any sense???????

Thanks for your time japhree, much appreciated. At least my 360 still works!!!!!

Just a thought: can you boot into Safe Mode?

Try booting into Safe Mode by repeatedly tapping the F8 key after your BIOS POST but before Windows starts.