HP Simplesave 1TB Boot Problem

[c2explosive]

Hey all, I've been having this problem. I got an HP 1tb External Hard Drive for Christmas and it's been great, it has backed up all my files with plenty of room to spare (even though I wanted it initially to just store all my extra media files on). But ever since I purchased it, upon booting with the device connected it locks up at the boot screen (black screen with flashing cursor). When starting without the hard drive attached (via USB 2.0) however, the computer boots normally.

--A tech friend of mine suggested that the External HD could be messing up the boot sequence because the computer does not know which hard drive (either the external or the internal) to boot from.

--Other friends are suggesting that it could just be a faulty part, the receipt is back home (approx. 2 1/2 hrs away) so I am reluctant to drive back and get it, but obviously will if I have to.

Any ideas or suggestions on how to fix? Thanks for your responses.

 

[Paperdoc]

I'd start looking in two areas of the BIOS Setup screens. The first is where you set the Boot Priority Sequence. It should be set to use the devices you actually want (for example, first the optical drive, then your main hard drive) and NO other options, so that the BIOS will not attempt to use the external device for boot purposes. The other is the are where USB devices generally are Enabled and configured. The symptoms you describe seem like Windows is having difficulty recognizing the USB device, and yet it can figure it all out if the device is connected AFTER Windows is running.See if there is something in USB device management in the BIOS that Enables the device without making it a boot device. Or maybe there's something odd about the power-saving settings and how USB device activity can "wake up" your machine.

 

[quatz]

hi, it does this because on board the drive there is a virtual cd partition that holds the software and autorun information for the setup of simpleasave and the computer is trying to load the software at boot. te easiest way to avoid this is to unplug the drive while your turning on your computer.