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APWNH · Tue Dec 30, 2003 5:48 pm

Whenever i boot up, this takes up about 10-20 seconds (i'm not sure how long exactly but its a little annoying), and it doesnt seem to do much.. do any of you who have this thing have the same "problem"? i wonder if it's possible to get a new BIOS for it..

Tue Dec 30, 2003 5:52 pm

The one I have on my board does the same. As for a newer bios, it is possible, but it usually is tied to the bios of the board it comes on.

APWNH · Tue Dec 30, 2003 7:19 pm

I did flash the mobo's bios already about a month ago, and nothing changed there. I don't know about other video cards, but my gf4 mx also has a bios, which is the first thing that shows up after the power button is pressed. so that's what's making me think its not related to the mobo's bios.. a Dell (at least the other one in my house) goes through its bios(es) in less than 5 seconds...

Tue Dec 30, 2003 7:28 pm

The bios is most likely searching for drives on the controller. I also have a promise ATA card in the system and it also takes about 15 secs to check the card for drives. If you have no drives on it, I would just turn it off in the bios.

APWNH · Tue Dec 30, 2003 7:33 pm

well i have my raptor on it.

Tue Dec 30, 2003 7:34 pm

Sorry missed that in your sig, I usually do not even look at them. It looks like you are just going to have to live with it then or stop using SATA.

APWNH · Tue Dec 30, 2003 7:48 pm

it's not much of a problem, it would be cool though, if it would boot in 20 seconds.

Tue Dec 30, 2003 8:25 pm

You would need a box with a solid state drive to boot that fast, as curent drives and controllers just take time to boot up.

slymaster · Tue Dec 30, 2003 9:29 pm

a person who needs help wrote:
it's not much of a problem, it would be cool though, if it would boot in 20 seconds.

I have a better solution - get that baby folding and leave it on 24/7. This way, you only need to reboot when you crash (hopefully not too often) and you will be helping a good cause. Also, team TR could use your help !

Cheers !

slymaster · Tue Dec 30, 2003 9:44 pm

One more thing, if you want to speed up your boot time and you happen to use DHCP, switch to a fixed IP address and your boot times will speed up considerably.

b3n113 · Tue Dec 30, 2003 9:49 pm

Aye, why are you rebooting so often that this is even an issue?

tu2thepoo · Tue Dec 30, 2003 9:58 pm

Starfalcon wrote:
You would need a box with a solid state drive to boot that fast, as curent drives and controllers just take time to boot up.

If you're running Windows XP and are using hibernate mode, you can. I've done it on an ECS K7S5A Pro and my current Albatron KX18D Pro (nforce2) - turn on quick POST, disable floppy drive seek, and with a relatively fast hard drive you can resume windows in 20-30 seconds. Most Win32 systems I've seen only use 110-150mb of memory when no other programs are running - at 20mB/sec (conservatively), that's only about 8-10 seconds to read the entire hiberfil.sys file.

'Course, that's assuming you don't use any extra SATA/IDE/SCSI controllers (or other peripherals with their own BIOSes) and don't have any funky NT domain/active directory/novell netware logon issues to work with (I don't know how well Hibernate mode plays with those services).

Win9X doesn't have a hibernate mode, if I remember correctly (and I probably don't), and Win2k is dog-slow entering/leaving hibernate mode, so you won't see a boot-up time that fast with those OSes, naturally.

APWNH · Tue Dec 30, 2003 10:21 pm

slymaster wrote:
One more thing, if you want to speed up your boot time and you happen to use DHCP, switch to a fixed IP address and your boot times will speed up considerably.

I do use DHCP, but i don't think it's possible to switch to fixed IP. i have cable, from Comcast, and a linksys router.

Aye, why are you rebooting so often that this is even an issue?

i don't know about now, but i always feel like it's not right when i leave the computer running w/o a reboot or shutdown for more than a day's worth of computing (usually 6 hours or so)... even though windows nt/2k/xp shouldn't become unstable over time. maybe it still is. maybe i'm just weird.

dragondestroyer · Tue Dec 30, 2003 11:04 pm

I have a gigabyte GA-8KNXP with the same problem. It has several raid chips including the 3112A and I turned the raid off. It shaved off a couple of seconds I think. Dont know if that will help you. Unfortunately I ran out of money, so I dont have to use the raid :cry:

. Now if I could just get the chip to work as good as it should in linux :-?

slymaster · Tue Dec 30, 2003 11:20 pm

a person who needs help wrote:
slymaster wrote:
One more thing, if you want to speed up your boot time and you happen to use DHCP, switch to a fixed IP address and your boot times will speed up considerably.

I do use DHCP, but i don't think it's possible to switch to fixed IP. i have cable, from Comcast, and a linksys router.

Your cable company will likely require that you use DHCP, but if you have a router, the router will take care of that requirement.

Your router acts as the link to the internet and receives an IP address from your cable company. Your router will have two addresses, one for your external internet IP, and one for your internal IP. You have a different set of IP addresses on your side of the router, which are considered private. You can allocate them as you please. Check the manual for your router, and it will tell you the default 'internal' IP address for your router. You can then select a fixed IP address for your XP machine that is compatible with that of the router, and your cable company will not know the difference.

If your router's IP address is 192.168.0.1 ( a common default on many routers ) just choose an address where only the last digit differs eg 192.168.0.2, and you will be off to the races, with much faster boot times. You will have to set your DNS settings manually if you do this - your ISP should provide you with DNS server addresses for those who wish to do a manual setup - if not, you can likely find out the addresses of your DNS servers from the status screen of your router (see router docs for how to access the config screens). If you have multiple systems (or printers) connected to the router, you will have to choose a fixed IP so as not to interfere with other devices. If you find you cannot access the interent after changing the settings (due to an incorrect setting), change your XP connection back to DHCP and you will be back in the game

If you want to give it a go and have any further questions, feel free to post - there are lots of people familiar with these issues. Going to a fixed IP will shave significant time from your boot. If you did not have a router (everyone with an interenet connectoin should have a router, in my opinion) you would have to use DHCP, but what you do on your side of the router is nobody's business but your own.

As far as leaving your PC on constantly, it should be no big deal with XP. Depending on what you do, it should be able to run for many days without a crash. If it does crash, reboot it. If you have unreliable power and no UPS, than it may be best to turn it on only when you need it. Otherwise, it is not likely a problem.

Cheers !

APWNH · Wed Dec 31, 2003 8:21 am

ok, i've tried to change these settings before, and i think theyre found in a "webpage" that seems to be that ip adress 192.168.0.1 or something very similar. Now if I change it to a fixed ip, and do the right stuff with the DNS servers and all, would it interfere with the other computer, also connected to the router, or do i have to configure that computer as well before the whole thing will work? And what do I do with DNS servers? i'll check on Comcast's site to see if they mention any DNS servers.

edit: it seems like i need to specify the IP adress i want for my computer, its netmask, a gateway, and a DNS server. Seems like, for the gateway, i just put in what i type in IE (or in this case, firebird) for the router's configurations. for the netmask, it seems like i just put in 255.255.255.0.

One site says that i could put my router for the DNS server.

wait, do i have to go into Network Settings or whatever it is, in Windows, or do i have to go to the router's configuration thing, or both?

slymaster · Wed Dec 31, 2003 10:33 am

I think you seem to have things going well, but just to clarify - you do not want to change the settings on the router, only on the PC (or PC's) that are connected to the router. The router will allocate an address from those available as new DHCP devices connect to it.

If you manually pick an address for one of your internal machines, it must not conflict with any other device. You can configure your router to have an exception for just one or two addresses, or you can change the range of allowable DHCP addresses to end at xx.xx.xx.25, and configure your machine(s) after that to guarantee that they never conflict. If all your internal machines are fixed, you will not have to worry about changing your DHCP settings on the router, but you will have to keep track of IP addresses on your own.

You are correct about using your router's IP address as the gateway setting in Windows.

I was not aware that you could use your router for DNS - perhaps someone who knows for sure can clarify that. I will test that on my router when I get home. I know that my router is aware of the DNS settings, as it receives them via DHCP from my ISP - perhaps it forwards DNS requests on to the real DNS servers. This may be unique to certain models of router as well.

Good Luck !

APWNH · Wed Dec 31, 2003 12:43 pm

ok, on the configurations for my router,

DHCP Server IP Address: 192.168.1.1

Client Hostname IP Address

steven 192.168.1.100
dell 192.168.1.101

LAN:

IP Address: 192.168.1.1
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
DHCP server: Enabled

WAN:

IP Address: 65.96.10.0
Subnet Mask: 255.255.248.0
Default Gateway: 65.96.8.1
DNS: 63.240.76.19
204.127.198.19
0.0.0.0
DHCP Remaining Time: 2 days 21:46:01

... this is under the Status bar.

under DHCP, it says:

You can configure the router to act as a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server for your network. Consult the user guide for instructions on how to setup your PCs to work with this feature.

and then there's an option to turn the DHCP for the router on or off (right now it's on), and the starting adress is 192.168.1.100, which is good because the ip for these two computers is 100 and 101.

Ok, so i'll leave the router alone, and put the stuff into windows, except, when i go into Network connections, and go to status under the LAN connection, all the right stuff is already in there.. but it says the type is "assigned by DHCP".

Wed Dec 31, 2003 12:48 pm

You might edit your post to take out those MAC addresses. They should remain private.

APWNH · Wed Dec 31, 2003 12:50 pm

oh. whoops.

edit: ok, i found where i enter the stuff so that it won't "be assigned by DHCP". should i do this? it's under TCP/IP properties.

edit: aha! now it says, "Manually Configured".

and the boot time was 45 seconds or so. i think its a little faster.

slymaster · Wed Dec 31, 2003 2:28 pm

As your router starts assiging DHCP addresses at 192.168.1.100+, any addresses below this (except 192.168.1.1, which is the router) can be used safely for a fixed IP address without interfering with the DHCP assigned addresses. This way you can have a mixture of fixed IP's and DHCP IP's if you want to, or you can make everything fixed - your choice.

Looks like you have it down to a science.

APWNH · Wed Dec 31, 2003 5:48 pm

hehe, i hate it when i dont completely understand something.

so I actually should set it to 192.168.1.2 or higher, under 192.168.1.100?

slymaster · Wed Dec 31, 2003 7:38 pm

a person who needs help wrote:
hehe, i hate it when i dont completely understand something.

so I actually should set it to 192.168.1.2 or higher, under 192.168.1.100?

Perfect !

This gives you the freedom to use fixed IP addresses and DHCP without ever having conflicts. If you were building a larger network, you would likely want to have a few devices with fixed IP (servers, printers, any other device, specialty workstations etc.) and leave the rest to DHCP. Generic PC's are good candidates for DHCP, as you can swap them in and out without worrying about which IP addresses are available - they receive an address as they come on-line. If you have a large number of PC's in the building, you end up having minor hardware failures on a regular basis once they start getting old, so you constantly swap machines in and out. It is nice to not worry about IP addresses. Eventually you get approval to purchase a new batch of machines, and all is stable again.

It can also be useful to reserve a block of IP addresses for remote users (dial-up, VPN, etc.).

For home use, it is certainly more convenient to use DHCP - if you have a router and Win2k or XP, it is almost completely plug and play. I have found that a fixed IP speeds up your boot time considerably, so you be the judge whether the exercise was worth it for you. At the very least, you know a little more about networking than you did before. I fogot to mention about the gateway and subnet mask before, so you did well to figure it all out.

I guess we are diverging quite a bit from storage, but I am glad you got it working, and hopefully have better boot times.

Cheers !

APWNH · Wed Dec 31, 2003 8:13 pm

I don't know whether it started faster; when i did it with 192.168.1.100, it took about 3 seconds longer (as opposed to 192.168.1.2), maybe it'll be different when i do it later, but, yeah, it's probably more useful that now i know a lot more about networking. thanks dude.

APWNH · Wed Dec 31, 2003 11:00 pm

And HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!!!

APWNH · Thu Jan 01, 2004 12:49 pm

Ok, i started timing right when the NV17 BIOS showed up, which is about 1 or 2 seconds after pressing the button. at 17 and a half seconds, it was through with all the BIOSes. at 41.1 seconds I could click an icon on the desktop (which is just about when the desktop shows up after the blue screen). about 3 to 5 seconds later just about everything is loaded. so, yeah, the fixed IP probably helped windows load quite a bit faster.

Does making a fixed IP on this side of the router mean that I can host multiplayer games on gamespy?

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