Interesting boot issue... slow on cold boots only

[bettergaming]

Hello my name is Eric, and as you can no doubt see, this is my first post on this site. I know what I am doing when it comes to computers, I have built them before and I was a computer salesperson at Best Buy a few months ago. Any help anyone can provide for solving this issue would be greatly appreciated! I assure you I will check back frequently to this post to see if there are any posts to help me! Well, onto the problem.

Whenever I am doing a "cold boot" (aka: booting my PC up while it had been off for a while) it does not start correctly. This is a computer I just built, and I will include all specs below. When I press the power button, the screen just stays black for around 2 minutes. Then after this waiting period, it finally goes to the motherboard screen, and then proceeds to correctly start windows XP Home. I do not know what could be causing this ~2min delay... Again any help would be greatly appreciated, as I must find out what is causing this delay before I can use the computer.

Core 2 Duo cpu e6300
DG965WH Intel Motherboard
400 W Dynex Power Supply
-no video card- (Graphics Media Accellerator on board)
160 GB HDD by Western Digital (sata 300)
DVD/CD Writer (Dual Layer) by Samsung
2 GB 667 MHz Corsair 1GBx2 Twin2X Dual Channel Matched Pair DDR2 SDRAM

Again, any help (even a guess) as to why this 2min delay is happening (before the motherboard screen), it would be greatly appreciated. I will be checking back regularly to see if anyone has posted a reply.

[Cricket]

What have you tried to do to fix the problem?

Did you try powering it up with the opticals disconnected yet?

Did you try another power supply yet?

Did you try to power up with the motherboard out of the case yet?

Did you try new drive data cables yet?

Cricket

[glc]

It's possibly that Dynex power supply. As you probably know, that's Best Buy's house brand and it's not made by one of the quality manufacturers. Whether you have a video card or not, you need a quality ATX 2.0 power supply for that motherboard, not just an ATX 1.x unit with an extra 4 pin connector grafted onto the 20 pin. The only other thing I've seen that can cause this is a bad hard drive that won't spin up all the way till it's warm. You can test this by disconnecting it (both cables) and seeing if it boots faster - it will fail due to no bootable device but you will still at least get a POST screen right away. Now - this still won't be totally conclusive - if it boots right away, the hard drive may be fine but the startup load could be choking that power supply - which won't happen with a quality unit.

[bettergaming]

I have tried the following to get it to work:

I have tried disconnecting the Optical Drive. This did stop a noise that was being made by the drive, but it did not speed up the boot.

I also tried disconnecting the HDD - no luck. I also tried hooking up a 250 GB HDD by WD - also no luck.

I tried connecting the computer peripherals using different power cords that didn't work either.

I could try using a new power supply, but I have no units around to test. I would be willing to go out and buy a retail power supply if someone was certain/semicertain that the problem is the power supply. Thanks alot for your help!

[Cricket]

Try getting the system to POST with the motherboard out of the case and only the core components installed (CPU, heatsink, RAM, power supply, keyboard and monitor) and let us know if the problem still persists. Could be the power supply but it could also be the motherboard...I'm leaning towards the power supply since it's not a good quality unit.

Cricket

[glc]

If you still have a decent relationship with the store you worked at, why not ask the geeks in the back if you can borrow a bench power supply to test with?

[bettergaming]

I wish it was possible for me to go ask the Geek Squad to use one of theirs. Unfortunatly, for a couple of reasons, that isn't possible.

I looked around again at the wiring and found a SATA power cable off the power supply that i had not connected. I am not aware of what the sata power supply cable is for. I did hook it into my (300 sata) western digital HDD 160 GB. This may have fixed the problem, but it's hard to tell since I only experience this ~2min delay when I am doing a "cold boot" (turning on the computer when it is cooled down from non-use)

[flanzig1]

SATA drives have a SATA power connector and a standard 4 pin molex power connector. You use ONLY one of them.

[glc]

If you have a SATA power connector AND a standard 4 pin connected to the drive, you will FRY the drive. Use only the SATA power.

[bettergaming]

I think I figured out the issue. I believe one of my RAM memory sticks is defective.

[glc]

Have you run any ram diagnostics?