XPP boot annoyance

One of my systems has just started to display some odd boot behaviour.
At times it'll boot up in less than 30 secs, other times it takes almost 2.5 minutes. These are switch-offs and restarts I'm talking about, not reboots.

There doesn't seem to be any pattern I can identify, except that the two times are consistent, actually 27 secs and 2m 22secs. But the longer boot is rarer than the short version.

I've tested the ram and that's OK, I've tried removing the PCI devices (a Promise IDE controller and a USB 2.0 card) one at a time, but there's no difference - sometimes it'll boot fast, other times the long slooooow boot.

Ideas would be welcome.

PS - I've tried running bootvis, not so much to optimize the system as to try to identify anything that has a varying start time. So far nothing has shown up.

And there's nothing sinister in the system, no bugs of any kind. HJT! shows nothing unusual in startup, Trojan Hunter is up to date, as well as NOD32 AV.

The hardware is:
Asus 7N266-VM, XPP, 1gb Duron, 256 mb. BIOS is the latest for that board

Cheers.

 

Thanks, TonyT - I think I've solved it. It was\is the Promise Ultra100TX2 controller card, which is supposed to be recognised by XP but from time to time, isn't seen straight off.

Cheers.

 

Also try downloading and installing the lastest versions of all the drivers for your hardware, from the website of each device's manufacturer.

Particularly:

Video card
Sound
Motherboard chipset

Also i have had cases where the CDROM causes the PC to slow down a lot at random times. Try disconnecting it and see if it helps. In some of these CDROM cases the problem only occurs if there is a CD in the drive. The problem is usually caused by the CD being faulty or damaged, or the CDROM itself having drama.

For help with the above suggestions and implimentation,ask.

Hope this helps