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iPod Killed My PC Well "killed" is too strong a word, but in fact it was indeed my iPod that was to blame for my recent problems. I'm running Windows XP Professional, and a few days ago my PC began taking a very long time to boot. I mean a very long time--18 minutes! Once it was up and running, all was well, at least most of the time. Other clues: If I started in Safe Mode, it booted quickly, and if I then did a Restart in Normal Mode, it came up fairly quickly. I won't tell you all the red herrings I followed, but put it this way: I now have a new disk drive and a case with better cooling.
Eventually I noticed that two applications were weird: iTunes and the iPod Manager. Unplugging and replugging the iPod didn't help with those--I never tried booting without the iPost connected--but when I actually re-booted the iPod itself (connected to the PC via FireWire) everything worked great, even the normally fast startups.
My guess: I think Windows XP changes the Pentium's interrupt mask late in the bootstrap process, just before the Desktop appears. Prior to that time I think my iPod via the FireWire interface was flooding the CPU with interrupt requests. The requests would be there once the system was up and running, but with the mask changed and/or a different interrupt handler installed. Once the system is fully running XP I believe these hardware interrupts are processed at a much lower priority, hence their minimal impact on system performance.
The above is speculation, but highly likely IMNSHO. You'd think that an OS as mature as XP would include logic to detect and report excessive hardware interrupts during bootstrap, wouldn't you?
Posted Thursday, March 18, 2004 5:48:23 PM 
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