MSI K8N Neo Plat help please!!!

Question

Hi guys, long time browser first time poster on these forums.
I have a few questions which im hoping some of you can help me with, i searched through the message boards but found no answer so I thought i'd write a plea for help.
I recently sold my Asus K8V Deluxe and decided to replace it with a nForce3 250Gb alternative. I ended up purchasing an MSI K8N Neo, which is fantastic apart from 3 particular issues:
1. After the PC POSTs and before the WinXP loading screen, there is a long delay (about 25-30 seconds) where the PC does nothing. No hard disk activity or anything, just sits there on a blank screen. Can anyone help with as to what might be causing this problem?
2. Im using a WD 120Gb SATA hard drive, connected to SATA port 3. Using the 'speed test' tool that is provided under the Nvidia Serial ATA controller, I receive a burst speed rate of 69.9mb / sec and a sustained speed of 52.4mb / sec. This falls far below the claimed 150mb / sec. Is there anything I can do to improve this??
3. In terms of actual system performance its more or less identical to when I had the K8V. I've read in a few reviews that the nForce3 mobo's are faster than the VIA variety. Again is there something I can do to improve this or am I just a gullible mofo?
All drivers are completely up to date and the system is running on a fresh install of XP.
Cheers.

Answer 1

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1. After the PC POSTs and before the WinXP loading screen, there is a long delay (about 25-30 seconds) where the PC does nothing. No hard disk activity or anything, just sits there on a blank screen. Can anyone help with as to what might be causing this problem?
First, are you raiding drives? It seems you are not, so my next question is did you load the drivers off the floppy disk? For sata drives that are not raided, this is an unnecessary step that has caused systems to hang at startup.-solution- reformat without loading these drivers.
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2. Im using a WD 120Gb SATA hard drive, connected to SATA port 3. Using the 'speed test' tool that is provided under the Nvidia Serial ATA controller, I receive a burst speed rate of 69.9mb / sec and a sustained speed of 52.4mb / sec. This falls far below the claimed 150mb / sec. Is there anything I can do to improve this??
That is about right for that drive. The 150 mb/s is just theoretical, not realistic at this point. My raptor at 10,000rpm's gets about 121mb/s burst and 70mb/s average. So if anything your burst may be a little low. The rpm's of the hard drive is makingmore of the difference than the sata.
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3. In terms of actual system performance its more or less identical to when I had the K8V. I've read in a few reviews that the nForce3 mobo's are faster than the VIA variety. Again is there something I can do to improve this or am I just a gullible mofo?
The Nforce3 250's are generally a little faster than via's but in some areas not so. These difference would hardly be noticed by the naked eye in most instances, only benchmarks. So you sre not gullible, just a little uninformed about the actual speed difference.