BootCamp drivers crash Windows 7, slow startup, boot order?, backup drive

Question

I have 3 issues that may be related or possibly not related to each other. I use an iMac (currently with Leopard 10.5.8 on a completely clean installation of both Leopard and Windows 7 on a freshly formatted and partitioned drive).
Issues:
1. Before reformatting and installing Leopard and Windows 7, I tried to install Snow Leopard and then Snow Leopard Bootcamp drivers into Windows 7. This crashed Windows 7.
2. Slow startup of Windows 7 - Drivers needed?
3. Firewire backup drive never re-mounts after using WIndows and then going back to OS X.
*Details of issues*:
In the past, before I completely re-installed Leopard 10.5.8 with a new Windows 7, with this same pair of operating systems, I always had a slow startup of Windows 7 on Boot Camp. Sometimes this would take up to 6 minutes to completely open Windows 7. The "Starting Windows" message would appear usually soon, but it would tale a very long time before the Windows logo Flag would appear. The slow startup still continues, even after a complete reinstallation of these on a freshly re-formatted and re-partitioned hard drive (This re-installation was done for reasons shown below).
For a long while I have thought that because I had never installed any BootCamp drivers into Windows 7, then it might start better if I were to install the BootCamp drivers from an installation disk. Thus when I the other day briefly upgraded to Snow Leopard, this time I went ahead while operating under Windows 7 to install into my already existing Windows 7 the set of Boot Camp drivers from the Snow Leopard installation disk. The installation seemed to go well, but it then hung up and never continued when it tried to install the Intel chipset driver. An an hour had passed with no further progress. Thus I force-shutdown the computer, and Windows then never opened until I restarted under safe mode. After that when I would restart Windows 7 "normally", I found also that the Apple wireless keyboard under BootCamp no longer was recognized. The "normal" slow booting of Windows 7 still remained.
Because of I was not sure just what all might have been messed up, and because I am waiting for new versions of several programs that I use to be made as versions compatible with Snow Leopard, I reformatted the complete drive (Both partitions were merged into 1), and then I reinstalled Leopard on a freshly prepared drive, followed by newly installing Windows 7 on a new BootCamp partition. Both systems were fresh installs on a freshly prepared drive and partitions. These were not from clones of the previous installations. This time I did not try to install any drivers from the Leopard disk. The slow booting of Windows 7 continues.
Things I have suspected might cause the slow booting:
1. Boot order of the Windows partition may be set to look for a CD-ROM before booting from the Windows 7 on the BootCamp Partition. To solve this, I have tried to open the BIOS on startup of Windows 7 in order to set the boot order. I am not sure which function key to press, but in trying several, I have gotten a DOS screen that shows Windows 7 as an option, but nothing else. When I select "Advanced", I get a list that includes "Safe Mode", "Boot Logging", and other items, but not anything for boot order.
2. The drivers for BootCamp might not yet be made for Windows 7, and I need to wait until these are so that these can be installed. After such, then maybe the slow startup might be fixed?
3. Possibly my Firewire backup drive interferes (permanently?) with the Windows startup process, because after I use Windows and then go back to OS X, the backup drive (Maxtor OneTouch III firewire drive) will not load on the MacIntosh desktop until I unplug the firewire from both the computer and the Maxtor drive and unplug the power cable to the backup drive, followed by replugging all of this in. (Note: The backup drive is formatted for Macintosh and is never seen as a drive in "My Computer" or in "Network Places" when I operate Windows 7).
Are you able to help/ Thank you.
Sincerely,
Wilson

Answer 1

Extra comments;
I also tried the following, which did not fix the startup (*Once up, Windows works well!*):
1. Checked for file and disk errors (ckdsk?? on startup).
2. Purged temporary internet and other temporary files (using internet options and disk cleanup utilities)
3. Cleared out Prefetch files.
4. Emptied trash.
5. Under "msconfig", I found 4 items there as startup items. I disabled Adobe Reader and Quicktime helpers, leaving only thus 2 startup items of the 4 enabled (Bulldog and some Microsoft thing).
6. Defragmented.
No better results.
Sincerely,
Wilson