P4B266/ 1.6a boot much slower after nic installed

[G.Robert]

I went ahead and reinstalled Win98se, the latest Intel Chipset Utility and then the Intel Ultra ATA instead of the Application Accelerator and everything seems ok, sort of.......

While the problem I described in my initial post seems resolved by the above action, something new has popped up. The only card installed in the rig thus far had been the video card (Visiontek Ti-200), so after I did the reinstall of 98se and Intel drivers, I installed the nic (Linksys 10/100).

What I've noticed is the system seems a little sluggish since, and especially during boot up. The boot time has almost doubled since installing the nic. For example, before the nic, if I did start--shutdown---restart, it only took about 30-35 seconds to be back to the desktop and ready to go. Now it's 60-70 seconds, very noticeable. It seems to really crawl at boot when it's at the device listing screen, where it seems to take 20 or more seconds there alone.
I installed the nic in pci slot #3 and there are no other cards installed (other than AGP).
I did notice the nic has irq #9, as does one of the usb listings, but it seems difficult to avoid sharing with one of the usb's as the have or share 4 of the irq's.

Any suggestions on this?

 

[Buz2b]

It is not uncommon for the installation of a NIC to cause a slowdown in boot times with Win9X on some boards. I'm not sure there is a fix for it either. However, it shouldn't slow the system down once it has booted to the OS. Have you tried any benchmarks to confirm this? Don't worry about the IRQ sharing; that is not a problem unless you see an actual conflict in Device Manager or a piece of hardware stops working.

 

[jiffylube1024]

I've had this problem on many motherboards when I installed a NIC. Usually it comes up when you're not connected to the internet on the NIC (you just put the card in but no ethernet cable connecting it to anything). On Win9x it just sits there looking for a device to connect to (sometimes for 1-3 minutes).

 

[phamtastik]

Not sure how your network is connected but if your computer is set to dynamic ip then Win98 may take a while to start up because of this.
Try static ip's that may speed things up.

 

[mikeg]

Yup if you install a NIC on a computer it will slow down the boot time into windows. One reason for this is that it needs to get a valid IP from the network. So if you don't have a DHCP server on the network this could take some time. One way to make the computer boot up faster is to use static IP address on it. I really don't think that there is any problems with what is happening on your system. I bet that if you do the same thing to any of your other computers it will also increase the boot times.
Just my 2 cents
Mike G.

 

[jakethemuss]

This page shows how you can assign a static IP address on your system. I had the same prob of long boot time after installing nic, and the following the instructions on this page fixed the problem. Good luck

 

[G.Robert]

So if I understand correctly, I just need to go into the control panel-->network-->configuration tab-->highlight tcp/ip for the nic-->properties-->ip address tab and asign it 192.168.0.1? Do I need to do anything to the subnet mask setting?

Will I need to undo this next week when I get the cable modem internet service or can this stay setup like this?

Thanks for all the great info!

 

[phamtastik]

If your getting cable modem and not using a router then most likely you will have to change it back to Dynamic IP settigns and your NIC would get a IP off the cable modem.
Your cable modem maybe even static depending on your service.

With the cable modem on the nic I don't htink it will take that long for Win98se to boot to windows.