LONG delay on WINXP from BIOS to OS, Seems to be HD, but not sure how.

[daniel_sergeant]

LONG delay between Win XP Pro SP3 splash screen and OS launch. Maybe 5 mins?

Once it is running, there are no issues. I have used other hard drives (same model HD, different image) in place of the one that appears to be the source of the lag with no issues, so that would seem to rule out BIOS issues. No driver conflicts shown in device manager.
Dell T1500, Win XP Pro SP3, 2.67Ghz Processor. 3GB Ram. BIOS 2.4.0 (most current rev).

This PC runs a GUI application that launches on startup. I'd blame the GUI setup, but I would think that I should still at least make it to the login screen if that was the case. Is there something that manages the handoff from the BIOS to the HD that could be chugging for that long?

 

[ConjurerDragon]

You are sure that the BIOS is set correctly for the bootorder? e.g. not a setting that the BIOS first checks if there is a floppydisk with an OS and only if none is found checks the CD-ROM and then the harddisk?

If you are using DSL for your internet do you still have TCP/IP enabled? That might cause a large pause while booting
link in german
http://www.windows-tweaks.info/xp-vista/windows-xp-windows-legt-beim-hochfahren-eine-lange-pause-ein-dsl/

Do you have Windows XP SP3 (not pro but the 32bit version) or Windows XP Pro (64bit)? For the latter as far as I know there was only an official Service Pack 2. You can check that if you click start and execute "MSINFO32" to see the exact build of the OS.

When you click START, and run "MSCONFIG" what is listed as automatically starting with Windows?

 

[occational_gamer]

Just my 2 cents: I recently started reviving an old WinXP PC (P3 933MHz). I started experiencing a longer (though, still only a few seconds extra) delay between bios and OS. I noticed this happened right after I installed Avast AV. It seems it does a rootkit/bootloader virus check before handing off to the OS. Maybe there is something similar happening in your case?