External Hard Drive - PC not booting

[SueBJ]

Hi
I have purchased and installed a Seagate Free Agent Go 120GB hard drive on my pc.
I am running windows XP.
The HD works fine, I have imported all my pictures and music onto it, no problems apart from having to re do my Itunes - arghhhh!!
The only  thing is my pc won't start up while it is plugged in.
It gets to the first screen - the black one with white text - that shows the pc details and has ESC to enter setup etc.
It completly stops at that screen, no ticking over of numbers etc.
I am guessing my pc is using my new HD to try to start?

[devlin]

Try going into your systems BIOs and check the boot device sequence. It may say to boot from USB device before boot from hard drive. You need to change this to boot from internal drive0 (main boot drive) first or boot from CD/DVD first and main boot HD second.

 I usually keep mine set to boot from internal (main) drive/drive0 first (faster boot up), CD/DVD drive 2nd, USB 3rd, Network 4th.

[SueBJ]

Thanks for that. I tried it but I am still having the same problem.
The boot sequence is as follows
1. Floppy Disk
2. cd/dvd
3. USB HDD (which I am assuming is my external HD)

I tried changing the first one from floppy to HDD0 but my pc still will not boot up past that first screen unless I unplug the external HD before turning my pc on. Once I plug it in everythng works fine and all the date etc is there.

[patio]

The third choice should be internal hard drive...

[devlin]

Thanks for that. I tried it but I am still having the same problem.
The boot sequence is as follows
1. Floppy Disk
2. cd/dvd
3. USB HDD (which I am assuming is my external HD)

I don't understand why your hdd0 isn't in your boot sequence. If you don't have it in your boot sequence as you show above, it won't boot because it's not being told too.

From what you show as your boot sequence it tells me that when you start your computer first it looks for a bootable floppy disk, failing to find one it then looks for a bootable CD/DVD disc, if it fails to find that then it tries booting from your external USB hard drive. No where does it tell it to look at the internal hard drive for booting instructions.

[SueBJ]

Thanks for that
I will try HDD0
then HDD1
HDD 2

someon mentioned to me to remove the floppy and cd/dvd - sometimes it can look at the cd one as a USB

[SueBJ]

arghhh - still didn't work.
There is a section called enable other boot drives? or something very similar to that.Could that cause a problem? I am totally stumped at this point. I understand the boot sequence thing now.
Would plugging it into another USB port be of any help?

[street1 (RIP)]

Does your BIOS have enable/disable USB boot options ?

[patio]

In the 3rd spot use the up/down arrow keys to change that listing to HDD 0...
Then press F10 to save changes and exit...
Answer yes to the prompt to re-boot and see what happens.

[pjz153]

I have the same problem. What happens if you shut down and restart rather than just restart? My boots fine if I shut down first.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

I have the same problem. What happens if you shut down and restart rather than just restart? My boots fine if I shut down first.

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