Repurposed old Cpu and MB for HTPC but slow boot

[Totalslaughter]

So I build a second rig with spare parts after I upgraded/built a new gaming rig. I also purchased new parts for the the new rig which will be used as an htpc.

Used from old rig, worked fine previously:

athalon x2 be-2300
Asus M3a78-CM
4gb kingston DDR2 800mhz

I did a fresh install of windows 7 on an 80gig drive I had and boot time was ridiculously slow. I un-overclocked, put everything back to stock speeds, same problem.

I then bought a 60gig SSD and new power supply thinking one of those might have been the problem. I again did a fresh install of win7 on the new ssd and same problem. It just takes forever to load windows, stays on the colorful windows logo screen for 4-5 minutes.

So, the only things I haven't replaced now is the ram, motherboard and cpu, was planning on upgrading eventually but didn't want to have to right away.

Anyway I can figure out what exactly is causing the problem, which of those 3 components, or anything to try to fix the problem. Windows seems to run fine once it's booted, it wakes from standby quickly, its just when I reboot it's so slow.

Any help is much appreciated, really don't know what to think at this point.

 

[Totalslaughter]

Forgot graphics card, older Ati card x2200 or something but didn't think graphics card could be stalling system boot.

 

[christiangordon]

What do you have the settings set to for the SATA controller in the BIOS?

 

[rwpritchett]

^along with that... what AHCI/SATA drivers have you tried?

I had a similar problem with a Gigabyte board. It was picky about which driver was installed for SATA controller. Certain drivers would make the boot take forever.

Another "long boot" problem I had (same Gig. board) was a setting in the BIOS. It was a setting that allowed legacy USB boot drives. I have a USB SD card reader installed, and when that BIOS setting was enabled the boot would take 2-3 minutes because it was waiting for the SD memory card "drives" (no cards installed) to time out before loading Windows on the hard drive. That one drove me crazy for about 2 weeks until I found the BIOS setting to turn it off.

 

[Dougie Fresh]

<hijack>
Interestingly, the RF dongle I added for my wireless keyboard causes booting to take a very long time, even with the "legacy boot drives" setting off. I think it's the same problem as above -- waiting on a timeout of some kind. This is also a Gigabyte board (GA-MA78GM-US2H). I thought for sure turning that option off in the BIOS would have solved it.
</hijack>

 

[Totalslaughter]

Sata set to AHCI. Just using default win7 drivers. I had read while installing an ssd in my main rig that the win7 driver was the only one that supported trim or something. Haven't had a problem with that rig, crucial c300 on a ga-890fxa-ud7 also using the default windows driver.

 

[Totalslaughter]

So I played in bios a little and disabled legacy usb and now it boots fast like an ssd should.