Windows Won't Start While Flash Drive is Plugged In

[Magnusfarce]

My W2k system won't start up properly when there is a removeable storage
devide plugged into any of the USB ports. Following reboot or cold start,
the machine goes into the POST normally and then halts with a black screen.
As soon as I remove the offending flash drive (or whatever), Windows starts
up normally. After it is up and running, I can plug in, use, and remove any
of these devices normally. Other full time USB devices (keyboard, etc.)
work fine. Control Panel / System / etc. shows no USB conflicts or
problems.

Any idea what is happening here?

- Magnusfarce

 

[kr]

My W2k system won't start up properly when there is a removeable storage
devide plugged into any of the USB ports. Following reboot or cold start,
the machine goes into the POST normally and then halts with a black screen.
As soon as I remove the offending flash drive (or whatever), Windows starts
up normally. After it is up and running, I can plug in, use, and remove any
of these devices normally. Other full time USB devices (keyboard, etc.)
work fine. Control Panel / System / etc. shows no USB conflicts or
problems.

Any idea what is happening here?

- Magnusfarce

your BIOS has a setting "boot order" wherein "external USB device" is set
as active. the pc is trying to boot to the Jump Drive, and failing. go
into the BIOS and change the boot order to (something
like)-> C:,floopy,cd-rom *OR* Cd-rom,floppy,c:

hth,
kr

 

[Bob I]

Just a guess. Does the BIOS "support" USB booting? And if so is the USB
placed ahead of the HD in the boot sequence?

 

[Magnusfarce]

Thanks guys. I found the incorrect settings in the BIOS you mentioned,
fixed them, and still have the same boot up problem. The "Other Device"
boot line was enabled, and I assumed that this was causing the problem.
(I've no idea how that got that way or why I would have made that change.)
I've reset the boot order to 1) Floppy, 2) HDD-0, and disabled the rest.
Unfortunately, the computer is still doing exactly the same thing on
startup. I'm really puzzled by this.

As a side note, I have a number of drives and a controller card in this
machine. According to Contol Panel / Comp Mgmt / Disk Mgmt, Disk "0" is the
HDD on my controller card and my C drive is Disk 2. Why would this be, and
could it be related to the boot up problem?

Thanks for the help.

- Magnusfarce