XP, external HD and long boot time

[me again]

I have Windows XP Home Edition running on a practically new Dell 8300 with
1GB RAM and 120MB HD.

I also have a Maxtor 40GB USB external hard drive that's partitoned into F
and G drives. My problem is when I boot up the PC it's accessing the Maxtor
drive for anywhere from 1-1/2 to 2 minutes. The screen is at the "Windows is
starting" prompt and the read light just stays lit on the Maxtor. After the
1-1/2 - 2 minutes are up the computer finishes whatever it was checking and
finishes booting up.

I originally bought the Maxtor to use on my Compaq PC with a 13GB HD
running Windows 98 FE and I never had this happen. I decided to use the
external HD on my new machine to back up files as well.

Does anyone know why it's doing this and how I can stop it? If I disconnect
the HD until after the PC is booted and then re-connect it XP will run some
sort of diagnostic to see what's on the HD and then present me with a list
of options and ask me what I want to do with it.....open pictures....play
videos....do nothing....etc. Being relatively new to XP after having Win98
for the last 5 years I am not yet familiar with a lot of the idiosyncracies
of XP. This may be a very simple fix, it may not, but I sure would
appreciate any help offered.

TIA

Joe

 

[Ron]

Suggest to pull the usb cable to boot to your internal
HDD and then plug the External in. When you see the box
appear showing the items of the maxtor just cancel it and
you will still have the drive available in explorer.
It is possible the problem is associated with the
external drive and windows is basically saying that there
is an error on the maxtor. Why not run a chkdisk on it to
see if it is well
Good Luck
Ron