Hard Drive Recognition Problem

[PLA]

A friend's computer, running Win98 had been infected with some viruses which have now all been successfully cleaned.
But there seems to be one more irritating characteristic.
On startup, hisPC takes ages to detect the HDD, and then, after about 30 seconds of frustrating waiting time, it roars into life. It doesn't matter if you tell the BIOS to search on bootup or give it the parameters of the drive, it just sits and waits.
Any ideas - Please?

PLA

 

[Isamu966]

You should try to see if it is not your HD that is causing the problem. Try you manufacturers diagonstic boot disk if they have one. I know that IBM, Maxtor, and Western Digital has one on their website. Did you check your connections or your jumpers?? Maybe something got loose.