When My External Harddrive is Plugged in, My Notebook Stalls When Booting Up...

This happens on the main screen shown below. When I disconnect the USB or the Power to my external hard drive, and re-boot, it starts up just fine.

 

If you want help from anyone, you'll have to post what the screen says because the white type is blurry and can't be read.

 

Ok so basically when the external usb hard drive is connected, the boot process freezes/stalls at the Dell post screen.

Could be that the bios is poorly configured and trying to boot from the external usb drive first. Could be some other reason.

Personally, if you have important information on your external usb drive, you do not want to have it connected at boot ie powered on.

Nothing easier than powering the drive on after windows has booted , it only takes a few seconds.

Good Luck

 

Makes alot of sense, but many leave them connected.
I would start up, and press del, or, f2, to get into the bios, and look at the boot options. Check that your on board hard drive is showing as first boot device , or, make sure it is.
If you do start up with the other hard drive connected, and you have usb, or, other device selected as start up, the computer becomes confused, and looks there first, so, assuming the external is usb, it will try to start up from it.

 

Maybe the notebook PSU is not enough to power all hardware plugged in at bootup time? Just a guess.

Bazza

 

The external has its own power supply

so the lack of power should not be the issue.
Since the OP hasn't been back, we are still in the dark as to what the message says.

 

Doh. :-D

Bazza

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I don't get any "message" it just sort of sort of stops.

Though if I hit F2 before it freezes and enter bios, and then escape (without changing anything, Windows starts up just fine. It's odd.

I'll check bios right now to see if it's trying to boot from the external usb drive first.

 

I checked bios, here's the order...

(active)
Diskette Drive
Internal HDD
USB Storage Device
CD/DVD
(deactivated)
Modular Bay HDD
Cardbus NIC
Onboard NIC

I imagine I can just deactivate the "USB storage device," and that'll solve my problem, right? Any thing else wrong with the current order/configuration? Also, If I lower "USB storage device" to being last on the list, but keep it active, will the External Drive be powered up on startup? Cause that would be ideal.

 

help?