New sytem extremely slow to POST

Hey there,

I have just assembled a new system and the POST takes almost 7 minutes to complete. The components I am using are an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe MB, AMD Athlon XP 3200+, Corsiar TwinX PC 3200 LL (2 @ 512 MB), WD 80gig HD 7200 rpm ATA-100, ATI AIW Radeon 9800 PRO, and ARTEC 56X CD-rom. The computer starts without any problems but the POST is running but in slow motion. When it gets to the end I have the BIOS set to boot from the CD-rom which has my Windows XP installation disk in it. I thought it froze here but on one of the attempts I let it go and like at least 15 minutes had passed and it started to load the O/S. However eventually the setup program terminates with a message that the installation program was unable to find a valid hard drive. I then procedded to try this hard drive in my old computer and it was recognized and I proceeded to partition and format it. I replaced it in my new system and even swapped IDE cables. No change. The Hard drive and CD-rom are recognized in the BIOS though. I borrowed a 256MB stick of PC 3200 memory from a friend but this had no effect either. I returned the motherboard for an even exchange next and the new motherboard exhibits the exact same problem. This is only the 3rd system I have built and the first time it didn't work for the most part. I hope some one here with a bit more knowledge can suggest what to do next, ASUS support has not been any help. Thanks

I have this very board. It did the same thing to me when I first got it... I discovered that in the bios it has a option to either run a fast post, and a slow post.. The difference is the the fast one only check to see if you have all the components, and the slow one checks and double check everything... memory, PATA, SATA, CPU. The best advice I can give is look in the bios, but another Idea is the your jumpers on the hard drive, or CD ROM might be wrong, and the bios does not correctly identify it.