PC Stops Responding During Startup

[Guest]

I have recently attached a Maxtor external hard drive to my computer via a
USB connection.

On some occassions, I shut down the PC but forget to switch off the external
HD. When I switch on the PC, during the startup process it stops and I have
a black screen. I switch off the external HD and Windows finishes startup.

I've checked the Maxtor site and they basically say to "Cycle the power to
the drive prior to restarting", "Disconnect the drive before restarting
Windows" or "Get latest updates from Microsoft". The first two answers don't
excite me. So I checked the MSFT site (kb832577) but that's in relation to
SP1.

I have SP2 with all the latest patches.

Does anyone know of a fix or am I stuck with remembering to switching the
external HD off?

 

[Dave B.]

With the drive on, go into bios setup and find the startup options, make
sure the internal drive is before any external or USB drives in the boot
order.

 

[Guest]

Thanks.

I left my external drive (connected via USB) on and restarted my computer.
During the startup process, I pressed delete to get to the computer's BIOS.
The following was my setup ... I made no changes:

Standard CMOS Features
- IDE Primary Master = HDD (ie my internal Western Digital 320M disk)
- IDE Primary Slave = DVD-ROM
- IDE Secondary Master = DVD-RW
- IDE Secondary Slave = None
- Drive A = None (ie I removed my floppy drive some time ago)
- Drive B = None
- Floppy 3 Mode Support = Disabled

Advanced BIOS Features
- First Boot = Floppy (I have none, so should probably be set to HDD-0 but I
don't think it's my problem)
- Second Boot = HDD-0
- Third Boot = CDROM
- Boot up Floppy Seek = Disabled

Integrated Peripherals
- USB legacy support = Disabled


Not sure if I did it the way you explained but that's the only way I know
how to enter the BIOS.

Anyway the computer booted up properly (with the external HD switched on).
The behaviour is inconsistent.

Any other thoughts?