What causes my computer to take so long to recognize all the drives?

When I click on "My Computer", the little flashlight goes back and forth searching and searching and finally after several minutes shows my drives. Sometimes, even then, it does not recognize portable storage devices connected to a USB port. This problem began several months ago, but before that, as soon as I double-clicked "My Computer", the drive icons would show up. My computer is about 3 years old.What causes my computer to take so long to recognize all the drives?
... ive had that problem before and i think its motherboard driver related ...i never pinned it down and i think its a compound problem relating to bios and driver corruption ... a reformat will fix it probably.
1. could be clogged up programs eg games and other space demanding programs



2. a virus scan ur computer

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What causes my computer to take so long to recognize all the drives?
it's really hard to say, if you have recently installed new software, it may be conflicking with other programs, you may have a virus, try using the disk defrag occasionally.
try some of the tips from

http://yanswers.blogspot.com/2006/10/pc-鈥?/a>



if the problem remains then



http://yanswers.blogspot.com/2006/10/win鈥?/a>What causes my computer to take so long to recognize all the drives?
Could be many things but three things stand out.

1. You may need to clean up your system by cleaning up your cache, deleting your Internet temp files, cookies and history. Then doing a check disk and a defrag.

2. You may have too many programs installed that you don't need and/or you don't use often and you may need to consider of uninstalling some

3. You may have some kind of a bug in your system that you will need to do a thorough scan to see if and what it may be.



You should also look into your RAM and see if you need to increase it. Another thing that you should consider before you spend any money is to go to Yahoo search and look for the Tuneup Utilities site; download their free trial program and use it to clean up your registry automatically. Furthermore, go into your Device manager and check to see if your drivers are OK or you need to re-install any.



As I said, it could be many little things that contribute to the problem and what I'm recommending is just the beginning of your search till you pinpoint the real cause of the problem.



Good luck