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E520 slow from BIOS to booting OS
Hi
I have an E520 which takes about 20 seconds to go from the black and white BIOS messages screen (after the progressing blue line and Dell logo screen) to the start of the boot sequence (I am presuming the start of the read of the MBR)
The BIOS messages contain such items as
This device controlled by the RAID BIOS
Intel (R) Matrix storage manager
Those messages may not be word perfect as I cannot grab them, but you get the gist.
I don't know why I am using the RAID BIOS but I tried switching it off a while ago through some fancy boot options malarky and I got nowhere.
Does anyone know if 20 seconds is normal on the E520? On my Dimension 4600 it almost instantaneously goes to the MBR.
wraywithaw
2 Posts
1
March 12th, 2010 06:00
I had a similar problem, and somehow stumbled upon a fix. I think the delay (mine was always 30 seconds) is somehow related to the Boot Sequence in System Setup. Try loading the default settings. To do so, restart the computer and press the F2 key to enter System Setup. Scroll almost all the way to the bottom of the options list to the section marked Maintenance. Highlight Maintenance and hit Enter to expand that section. Then highlight Load Defaults and hit enter. Confirm that you do indeed want to load the default settings. (You might need to make some adjustments to individual components. For example, I don't have a Floppy Disk Drive on my E520, but the default settings turn the Floppy Disk Drive on. I manually set the FDD to "off" so it wouldn't look for my non-existent FDD, thus avoiding a start-up error.) Finally, hit the Esc key and choose "Save and Exit." With any luck, the delay will be gone the next time you boot up.
DELL-Chris M
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March 10th, 2009 08:00
ubername,
List all the devices you have plugged into the PC.
ubername
5 Posts
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March 10th, 2009 14:00
Hi
Thanks for the response.
AFAIK I have a keyoard, a mouse, speakers plugged into the system. Can I take it from your reponse that the behaviour (+-20 secs from BIOS to MBR)) is unusual?
helmecj01
2.4K Posts
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March 10th, 2009 15:00
Have you check if fastboot is on in the BIOS? and be will under Post Behavior
Entering System Setup
ubername
5 Posts
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March 15th, 2010 13:00
Many thanks for replying
I have actually resolved the issue by switching to 'RAID autodetect' in the BIOS settings (from the default of 'RAID on'). This works for the various Linux distroo's I run on the box, but the pre-installed VIsta, and the Win 7 I installed (when RAID was on - Duh!) don't like it, so I have to undo the RAID setting whenever I want to boot into Windows. I must admit I am at a loss as to why the machine is shipped with RAID on when it only has one HDD, and it makes it take longer to boot up.
marflo
2 Posts
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May 14th, 2010 12:00
go in bios and choose hd first boot
ubername
5 Posts
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May 17th, 2010 16:00
Well, I could do that but that would cause a problem in that I run a bootloader from the MBR on my external USB drive which then gives options for the two OS's on the USB drive or the three on the HD. I would also have to change it to boot from the various CD's and flash drives I frequently use.
ubername
5 Posts
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May 21st, 2010 11:00
I eat my words - I have set the HD to boot first which has removed the delay and reconfigured the bootloader (grub) on the HD. Now everything works with no delay so thanks to marfio