OK, a few things:

The motherboard has an intel BX440 chipset. Intel is not in the habit of 
making chipsets for AMD cpus, and the OP mentions that it's a Pentium III, 
so we can agree that it is an Intel CPU.

The Intel CPUs of that time do NOT slow down when overheated. They simply 
STOP, or actually BURN and DIE. That feature was only added later when AMD 
implemented it in their Athlon XP cpus. 

The OP says this is a NEW BUILD, but since it is a CPU and motherboard 
that was made about 5 years ago, I don't think he meant that it was just 
assembled. I think he meant that he erased the hard disk and just finished 
installing the OS. This is what is called a "new build" of the OS.

Knowing this, I don't think it makes any sense to check the CPU cooling or 
voltages or speed settings unless the OP had played with them recently.

You mention the hard disk, and wonder if it might be the cause of the 
problem. You could find out by running spinrite, and see if it's doing a 
lot of error correcting. It also has a built-in benchmark. You can compare 
the results to the specs on the drive and see if they are what you expect.

You mention that the drive is "new". But the rest of the hardware is 
probably a few years old. Maybe the bios on the motherboard may need an 
upgrade to support the newer features of the hard disk. 

One of the other respondents said that it might be the presence of 
a network card causing the trouble. If it is, the system will boot at the 
correct speed, but then STALL for a while as it checks for network 
connectivity. Look for long delays in hard drive access on boot-up. 
Pull out the card if you have to.

Also, make sure you have unplugged usb devices if you have any. Plug-and 
play may be causing a delay. (I LOVE advice that rhymes!)



On 21/10/05 15:10 -0400, John Ferrell wrote:
> Since it is a new build I would start by verifying the cpu cooling is 
> working.
> Also, verify the speed settings for the cpu are correct and the bios has 
> caching turned on.
> 
> There is probably a support disk for the motherboard. If it is not 
> installed thins will run, but very slowly.
> 
> John Ferrell
> http://DixieNC.US
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "John Pearson" <xero@cmc.net>
> To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." <piclist@mit.edu>
> Sent: Friday, October 21, 2005 11:05 AM
> Subject: [OT] Slow PC boot-up...
> 
> 
> My Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard with Pent III 500MHz and Win 98SE takes over 
> 2 minutes to boot-up. It is a new build with only a couple programs loaded.
> 
> It has a new Seagate 7200rpm drive with 8meg buffer. Could the new drive 
> with buffer be taking the time? Maybe something in BIOS needs tweeking? Any 
> ideas?
> 
> Thanks
> John
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