PC hangs a minute or two before starting windows

[Tanner31593]

Hello everyone,

So im selling this extra PC i have sitting around since we went mac, and the PC sort of hangs on a black screen with the white thing that looks like this _ and it blinks for about 1-2 full minutes, then boots windows and works fine. but if someone sees the blinking screen for 2 minutes they may not think its working.

IS there anything i can do to decrease this time?

Thanks,

Tanner.

[lynx]

The system is probably looking for a hard drive (or other ide device) which is defined in the bios but not physically present.

During POST the bios waits for the device to time out, which is the delay you are seeing.

If you set the bios correctly the problem will go away.

[Tanner31593]

Well,

I reset the bios to the default settings and there isnt any difference.

OK so i just thought of this,
Before it was doing this, i tried to install ubuntu on another hard drive, and it apparently installed however there is no evidence at all of ubuntu being installed except for when i check che partitions on the hard drive, meaning i can boot into ubuntu at all.
Also, i restarted the computer with my windows xp cd in the drive, but i forgot to press a key to boot from the cd, and it started windows with no delay at all.
If that means anything.

[zapjb]

KillDisk. Start again.

[lynx]

In that case, you've possibly got a boot loader (probably from your ubuntu install) waiting for you to select one of the options, but for some reason you can't see the options.

Could it be at the top of the screen but you can't see it at the graphics card's default refresh rate? If so, try adjusting your monitor.