Internal Card Reader Slows Boot

It depends on when this issue occurs after you push the button: POST, BOOT, or STARTUP.

P.O.S.T (Power On Self Test) is literally when the BIOS "finds itself" and reads and checks the instructions in the CMOS chip. The first instruction is to emit a single BEEP when finished. The next instruction is to run the BOOT routine.

If the device is causing the POST to fail then I would guess an electrically defective device.

During the BOOT routine the BIOS maps the RAM, then finds, enumerates (names), and initiates (activates) the devices connected to the board, then goes looking for Boot Devices to start, in that order.

If the device is causing the BOOT to fail then it could be that the BIOS is too old to recognize the device, the device is defective and will not initiate, or the firmware in the device is bad or corrupted and does not send the proper identifier to the BIOS to read.

After the BIOS has completed it's BOOT routine and has found an active boot device it will run the STARTUP of the OS or whatever program it finds. Then, and only then, do the device's drivers come into play. Your device is failing before STARTUP, so forget about it's drivers.

Let us know whether the issue occurs before POST or during BIOS BOOT.

EDIT: When you say "slows down my boot quite a bit", what do you mean? 10 seconds? 60 seconds? More?

The device is causing a delay in POST, then there is a defect somewhere, most likely, as I said, in the card reader.

Do you have access to another computer that you can test the card reader in?

You might try performing a Clear CMOS (resetting the BIOS). Although I have doubts that will do anything, it might. Can't hurt, might help.

That doesn't sound good. Do you know what took out the HDD?

Most newer motherboards can boot from all sorts of stuff, not just hard drives and optical drives. My guess is it's looking all through your card reader trying to figure out if there is something there to boot from. When it finally decides that the answer is no, it then continues on its merry way.

See what your BIOS says about Boot Order or Boot Sequence. Usually there are three (sometimes four) options you can shuffle around and one at the bottom which says "Boot Other Devices Yes/No". If it says "Yes" for that one, try changing it to "No".

If there is an option for "Network Boot", turn it off.

See if that helps. :)

I just had this very issue as well with my new MSI mobo and a Ultra MD3 all in one 5.25" internal unit. The card reader wasn't playing nice at all with explorer.exe. Mine wasn't a slow boot issue but a resource activity issue making the system so pokey and unable to complete simple tasks. I was loosing my mind and tons of hair over this.
After my third clean OS install called MS and found out the install was rock solid and that it was something else. Over the next three days of elimination found the issue with the stupid like card reader cable ! Pulled then cable off the usb header and voila` life is good again !