Question : Problem: Why is boot up taking 6 minutes

I would be very grateful if someone could help with the following problem.

My recently purchased PC worked fine until a few days ago, but after being switched off by a local power failure it now takes about six minutes to boot up.
It auto detects the hard drive ok and both cd rom devices.
It reports Ultra DMA mode5, S.M.A.R.T  capable but disabled.
Next it  gives info on the sec master and sec slave

Then does nothing for 4.5 minutes, there is no hard drive activity obvious.
Eventually it bleeps and proceeds to boot up taking in total 6 minutes.

The system is AMD Athalon 64 3200+
200 gig HD
1gig ram
American Megatrends bios  A6741 VMS V1.0B7 090303
Release 1/02/04
Motherboard Micro Star  PT-2200

Thanks …Dave

Answer : Problem: Why is boot up taking 6 minutes

Actually resetting the BIOS is not just saving the settings.  What needs to be done (again keeping ddrdan advice in mind about voiding warrenty)  you need to open the case of the computer, and there should be a jumper for re-setting the BIOS. (Motherboard manual should have this information)  If you can't find it, you should be a battery on the motherboard somewhere, and remove the battery, unplug the computer, and wait a while. (sometimes only takes a minute, but I have heard people say 1 hour)  I would suggest 15-20 minutes.  Put the battery back in, and plug compter back in.  You may get some error about settings, and may have to go into the BIOS and check your settings.  I would also do as ddrdam suggested about setting your boot order to IDE0 being the only thing, just to see what happens. (Some BIOS's may not say IDE0, but C Only, but basically same thing)

Good Luck!