USB PSC

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Recently had reason to leave the HP 750 PSC USB2 connected off for a cold
boot. Oddly, something for the better was found after boot finished.
Before: Opening windows explorer at attempting to view all hard drives'
partitions took at least 15 seconds for display of same. Sometimes almost
30. PC does a double-take of the CDrom already inserted CD, and runs
autorun, even though the game it contains is already installed.
After: Takes about 2 seconds. CDrom autorun does not run for already
inserted CD.
Energizing or not energizing a firewire connected external hard drive seems
to have no effect of display time of windows explorer's drive/partition
contents in either case.

Have a Tri-boot w/3rd party boot manager, 98SE/WinME/XPHE. True in all
these windows environments. USB2 is onboard Intel chipset mobo, not an
add-on. The printer is energized for about 30 seconds prior to reaching the
windows boot portion if booted cold. Reboots/restarts are no different.

My question:
Is the delay caused by the printer itself, or the USB2 overhead not seen in
firewire? And, what is the basis for your response?