BIOS Updates forum

bought a p2b-n on ebay with an old bios
p2b-n working now with a 1266mhz p3-s on a powerleap adapter @ 1,05V @ 950mhz (very cool )
flashed the newest beta-bios (1014.003) (with modified (tusl2)-microcodes)
optimized the bios ... but i still have these 5seconds ...

pc powering up
counting memory
trendchipaway virus on guard blabla
detecting dvd drive ....

hanging for 5 secs after detecting the drives - then next screen with table and veryfing dmi data pool etc ...
pc is stable, no problems, no extra cards installed

any idea why the pc hangs there for 5 seconds ?

Is your boot sequence set to CD/DVD before the HDD? This could be the cause.
DVD readers have to do several checks before acknowledging the absence/presence of physical media. Unlike CD readers, it has to first check whether there's a DVD disk inside; if none, then check for CDs; if none either, then let the next boot device do its thing...

This does eat up a few seconds.

If not the boot sequence, have a look at how you have the drives jumpered. I came across a system recently that was hanging for a long time before detection of one of the hard drives, and sometimes it would detect it and sometimes it would not. I tried jumpering the drive differently, and not only did it detect almost instantly it comparison, it then did so upon every boot.

I also am working on another system where the CD Reader would detect after a 30 second delay. I left it by itself on the secondary IDE cable, but whether I attached it to the master or slave port or no matter how I jumpered it the drive would not respond any faster. So I replaced the drive and then it was also instantaneous detection. The old drives still works fine, it just had a compatibility issue with that BIOS apparently.

5 seconds - does it matter Some boards simply do the POST slightly longer...

no it doesnt matter ... but 5 seconds are 5 seconds ...

Please answer the question about DVD/CDROM and Boot Sequence !!

It might be possible the problem is from the "modified TUSL2 Microcodes" - did you try the 1014-003 without "modifying" anything ?
Asus germany list two different Biosses - one for P2B-N with OnBoard ATI Rage-IIc and another with Rage-PRO - picked the correct one ?

My girlfriend's son's HP 8750C has done this since day one.

Both drives are on the Secondary IDE port, with the CD Burner being the Master, and the plain CDROM being the Slave. Both are the original units (don't recall the exact parts at the moment).

On the first boot, it always finds both CD drives right away. On subsequent reboots, it always pauses when trying to detect the CDROM.

I checked and set the jumpers for Master and Slave (they were not set correctly...if I remember they were setup as CS) but it still does the same thing.

I haven't tried swapping positions...maybe I will just to see what happens.

On my Asus P2B, the POST takes a while too - but I've never measured that in seconds... 5 seconds is nothing compared to the rest of my boot process
I have SCSI controller there (with its own BIOS) with old (1992 )1GB IBM drive - it takes a while to spin it up and initialize. And initializing the external LS-120 drive on parallel port during Windows startup takes about half minute...

Rainbow wrote:On my Asus P2B, the POST takes a while too - but I've never measured that in seconds... 5 seconds is nothing compared to the rest of my boot process
I have SCSI controller there (with its own BIOS) with old (1992 )1GB IBM drive - it takes a while to spin it up and initialize. And initializing the external LS-120 drive on parallel port during Windows startup takes about half minute...

Time to upgrade...

I have also 120GB Samsung SP1213N and 8,4GB WD AC28400 there