Windows 7 startup time 20 mins - HELP?!

[phildrums]

Hi,
I got a copy of windows 7 for my machine, bought a new 160 Gb Seagate hard drive, but I had issues.
The first was that I couldn't boot from the DVD I had. I had to install through my other hard drive that was running windows XP. This worked fine, until I had to try to remove the C:\ drive running XP to connect up my other hard drive containing all of my useful data that I needed to transfer through to Windows 7 (program files etc). When I did this, my motherboard wouldn't boot from the D:\ drive alone for some reason...
So I instead got a bootable CD of win XP and installed that on a partition of the 160 Gb drive, then ran it through that, hoping to extend the partition of win 7 over the existing Xp partition and get round it that way. However, no matter how many times I tried re-installing, this time Win 7 was incredibly slow. I had Xp as the D:\ and 7 as the C:\ , in case this is why...
The startup time with this setup was 20 mins on a good run, and after a few updates it really got tiring. It seemed like, through the install, the hard drive was only operating in small bursts then idling, so installation took hours... could this be to do with the partitioning? Any help at all would be hugely appreciated! (I'm desperate!!!)

My machine specs are:
Asrock K7MV2 motherboard
Athlon 2200+ running at 1900 MHz
2x1GB PC2100 RAM
Seagate 160 gb Ultra-ATA HDD
Seagate barracuda 120gb Ultra-ATA secondary HDD
Geforce 6200 128mb
Pioneer DVD+RW disk drive

 

[arges86]

wow...
ok

first, i'd figure out why the disk drive didn't work, and then re-install Win7 fresh on the drive. (update firmware, make sure the BIOS recognizes the drive in POST, it should if WinXP can see it)

The best way to make sure the Master Boot Record is on the correct HD is to unplug the drive with XP on it and install Win7 w/only 1 HD in the computer. Then you can plug th XP drive back in and transfer all your important info back over

 

[Jonmor68]

"I couldn't boot from the DVD I had" Is it a genuine Windows 7 disk or one you burned from an iso file. It may be you didn't burn it correctly, or a bad burn.
When you install Windows 7 on a second drive and have XP on the first one, the boot record files are installed on the XP drive. The result is when you remove the first drive with XP, you can no longer boot W7 until you fix the MBR as you found out.
In regards to transferring files and programs, files and settings can be transferred using the W7 Easy Transfer Wizard to a second internal or external drive.
To use the W7 Easy Transfer Wizard in XP:
Browse to the DVD drive on your computer and click migsetup.exe in the Support\Migwiz directory.
As to the programs they are NOT transferrable, you need to reinstall them.
So your options are, keep XP with your programs on the old drive and install W7 on the new drive creating a dual boot, or disconnect the XP drive and do a clean install of W7 and then reconnect the old drive to recover data and use for storage.
To do a clean install if you are using upgrade media go here for instructions.
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/win7/clean-install-windows-7-with-upgrade-media.aspx
One way or the other you will need to reinstall as you have a seriously messed up system if it's taking 20 minutes to startup.