slow bootup

Hi, I have just installed 8.1 and during boot of my laptop there is a long delay (like > 2min) at the message "scanning hardware on boot". This is caused by the pcmcia cards that I have, as there is no delay if the machine is booted with the cards removed. Is there anyway I can either eliminate this particular step or change a setting to speed it up? I'm guessing that the cards don't respond well, or quickly to being probed. I have tryed playing with the settings under sysconfig, and in the scripts that seems to initiate the process (hwbootscan) by commenting out the pci and isapnp steps but to no avail. Jeff