I added a USB external hard drive to my desktop system and if the drive is
powered on, the system won't boot-- hangs at the login screen. If the drive
is powered off, the system boots normally.

Yeah, yeah-- know, I could just turn it off every time-- but that's a pain.
Any suggestions to fix?

External usb hd's are supposed to be disconnected before you pwr off. And
then connnected after win is running

"Douglas C. Neidermeyer" <doug@faber.edu> wrote in message
news:P_CdnUSEm4ELqUjZnZ2dnUVZ_qCdnZ2d@comcast.com. ..

Depending on the BIOS, you may have to disconnect the USB drive when
re-starting the computer.

What you can try, is to go in to the BIOS settings, and make sure that the
drive containing the Windows operating system is set to be the primary boot
drive in the sequence for selecting the boot drive.

--

JANA
_____


"Douglas C. Neidermeyer" <doug@faber.edu> wrote in message
news:P_CdnUSEm4ELqUjZnZ2dnUVZ_qCdnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
I added a USB external hard drive to my desktop system and if the drive is
powered on, the system won't boot-- hangs at the login screen. If the drive
is powered off, the system boots normally.

Yeah, yeah-- know, I could just turn it off every time-- but that's a pain.
Any suggestions to fix?

"Douglas C. Neidermeyer" <doug@faber.edu> wrote in message
news:P_CdnUSEm4ELqUjZnZ2dnUVZ_qCdnZ2d@comcast.com. ..

Thanks for all the suggestions-- but the situation is I get only a *partial*
boot, the system hangs at the login screen when I click on my name.
It's not that the system tries to boot from the external HD- it boots from
the C drive.

Does that clarification change any opinions?

Doug

"Meat Plow" <meat@meatplow.local> wrote in message
newsan.2006.08.08.13.35.00.553000@nntp.sun-meatplow.local...
No, I didn't.

Doug

"Meat Plow" <meat@meatplow.local> wrote in message
newsan.2006.08.08.14.27.25.946000@nntp.sun-meatplow.local...
Shoot, if I'm going to disable Plug & Play, I might as well just reformat
and reinstall WIN95 ;-)

Doug

Douglas C. Neidermeyer laid this down on his screen :

Windows 2000 and XP do their own PnP - so the setting in the BIOS
doesn't make any difference. In fact, Microsoft used to recommend
disabling PnP in the BIOS for Windows 2000.