Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P motherboard - Hard drive/IDE channel issue

Hello everyone,

I recently noticed that my computer boot up is extremely slow. The computer will get stuck at the MB logo screen for about twoo minutes and after it POST the computer will sit in the black screen for 7 minutes then the windows loading screen show up. I looked into the BIOS setting and for some unknown reason I have the same hard drives on two separate IDE channels?

I currently have 3 hard drives and two of them appear on two separate IDE channels. The Master hard drives on IDE Channel 0 Master and IDE Channel 4 Master and a spare hard drive on IDE Channel 1 Master and IDE Channel 4 Slave. I went ahead and disabled the two duplicated IDE Channels (IDE Channel 4 Master and Slave) and computer is back to normal speed now..

I am just curious what could have caused this to happen? Everything was fine when I first put this computer together about 2 years ago and I don't even know when the problem started as I always leave my computer on..

Thoughts?

Thanks!

A corrrupted BIOS can do that. It may have become corrupted for a number of reasons; most likely is voltage irregularities from the PSU.
You should change all settngs in BIOS to default, unplug, pull battery, clear CMOS by jumper (see your manual if not sure), put it back together, connect only the OS hD and reboot.
If is happens again, download the latest BIOS and reflash per your manual.
If it happens after that, it is possible that either the MB or PSU are going bad.