Boot up very slow (win 2000) Help

[Geoff]

I need the help of some kind person with more knowledge than me please.
I'm using Windows 2000 (mainly) and Windows 98 SE with a dual boot and up to a few days ago all was fine.
Now when booting I get the normal brief graphics card info. and then it goes to ..Check System Health: OK
then Main Processor: AMD-Duron
then Checking NVRAM..- and tha's where it hangs for about a minute. Before it used to go on straight away.

When it does start on again it checks the SCSI card connects and then hangs again for another minute before going on to the dual boot menu choice.
Once it gets to here I can then choose the OS as normal and everything is OK.

I've tried everything I can think of and I'm out of ideas now so I need help with this problem please.

 

[nolonemo]

I had an Athlon board that would freeze at the RAM check, turned out it was a dead IDE HD I was trying to put in it. I'd think its some kind of hardware issue since its happening before the dual boot screen. Sorry I can't help more.

 

[Geoff]

Thanks for your reply nolonemo, everything on the machine is working, I can access all the drives and all seems OK apart from this long boot up delay.
One thing that gives me cause for concern is six devices on IRQ nine. Two SCSI cards, the PCI-USB controller, Creative Sound Card, Hauppauge Win/TV and the Nvidia Quadro 2 MXR Graphics Card.
To those of you that know about such things, would this be a problem 'cos if it is then it's only just become one as I have not opened the case or altered anything. True, the TV card has never worked properly and conflicts with the graphics card but that was only if I tried to use it. I don't use it so perhaps I should take it out.
However, the computer in it's current configuration used to boot up without all this delay so what could be done to cure it please?

 

[Geoff]

Well, I've cured it! nolonemo gave me a clue, I knew that everything worked on my machine (unlike his HD) so I opened up the case and removed the Hauppauge TV card, moved the sound card in it's place, tookout and reseated the Nvidia graphics card and now the thing boots up as normal.
Just shows you, computers can give you a puzzle even though you haven't loaded anything on them or altered the configuration.

I think I'll go down the boozer and rest my brains now!