After wrestling with the HD clone issue for a couple of days I finally got a complete clone of the HD in my A50P. I used the clone wizard in Acronis TI11 set to automatic and everything went fine. Booting from the clone presents no Windows problems, even with XP SP3 and WGA installed. (I was worried about Windows verification issues.) The protected service partition is accessible through the normal boot entry points.

Now here's the odd thing. Now when I power up, it takes a looooooong time to get to the BIOS splash screen and an even loooooooonger time to get to the XP splash screen. After that, everything seems to be fine...

So what's with the long boot?

The first thing I'd check is boot order in BIOS, has it changed? What is it currently? You want the HD near the top of the list, only preceded by an optical drive. If that's all OK, I'd run diagnostics (both the manufacturers diag and PC-Doctor) against the new hard drive. I'd also probably reseat the new hard drive.

Thanks, Harry!

No change to boot device order. A50P based diagnostic tests run on the HD came back OK. I downloaded the WD HD diagnostic tool and ran all the tests, which came back OK.

After perusing these forums again, I disconnected the CD drive and rebooted. Same delay.

Next I will download the latest BIOS and flash it, just in case...

The new HD is a WD1600AAJB-22RRA0. This is not on the approved list. Could that be the problem?

Make sure your hard drive is not stuck in PIO mode.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/i ... /udma_fix/

Update...

Flashed BIOS to current version. Still slow booting.

Took the new HD out and changed jumper from Master to CS. BINGO! System boots like greased lightning now...

As a test I changed the jumper setting to Single. Boots fast there too.

So... if you have the jumper on Master, is it looking for a slave that doesn't exist?

Sounds like a newbie mistake here. I am sooooo embarrassed...

The next thing...

I was having so much fun upgrading the HD that I decided to upgrade the CD-ROM with a CD/DVD RW drive. I had a SATA unit sitting around, so I tried that. Seems to work just fine, except...

The boot delay is back with the HD jumper in any position. Except for Master with Slave Present. Then I get a BIOS error that says something like "no operating system found".

Besides the confounded boot delay, the SATA CD/DVD drive seems just fine.

I've been searching through the forum and haven't found anything yet (but I'm still looking).

Any ideas?

These drives run on different channels.
The hard disk runs of IDE channel 1 as Master and could have a second HD (if there is room).

The CD/DVD should run off the second IDE channel, where it would also be Master (and perhaps have room for a second drive).

If yours is a SATA drive, there is no Master/Slave/CS.