For some reason, my mandrake is taking a long time to boot up. It did this since I first installed it, and I've been busy getting everything set up for the past day or two, so Ive kinda disregarded it, but now I want to get it fixed. When it gets to the loading screen right after grub or lilo or whatever it comes with, it shows a blue screen with a progress bar, and the progress bar stays empty for like 2-3 minutes before it loads. Once the bar starts going, the OS boots in about 30 seconds, so I just need to get rid of this load time. Any ideas?

Seems I found what might be the problem.. if I hit esc and watch the text of what it's doing.. it looks like it's hanging right after it detects my CD drive. It says hdd: lite-on etc etc.. then it hangs for like a minute and says hde: no response, then hangs again and says hdg: no response. Is there some way to change it so it doesnt search for these nonexsistant drives?

Do you have a IDE controller card in that thing? That is what it is looking for. If not, that may be why it can't find it.

May want to check your BIOS and see if you something in there about the drives.

Later