External HDD causing Vista 64 to hang on bootup, how to stop it?

[kinkladze10]

Hi all, hope someone could help here maybe.

I have a pretty beefy pc running Vista 64 bit.

Here's the problem when I boot up with the external HDD attached the boot process takes an extra minute - 2 miniutes to get into windows.

I'll go past the screen with the green bar then I'll hang at a black screen for anything up to 2 mins

If I don't plug in the external HDD then I'm at a full boot in 30 secs or quicker.

I know it's the External HDD because if I unplug it while i'm at the hanging black screen, immediately the windows desktop will appear.

Its a 300 GIG Western Digital Drive.

This problem only occurs with Vista too, it was fine on XP.

I've looked on the WD website and nothing there can help, there is no driver I can install so I don't know what to do.

I've tried disabling indexing on it, I've unticked the readyboost and no difference either.

I've looked in the bios (asus mobo) and I can't find any setting that will allow me to disable the pc looking for USB stuff on boot. Maybe I have missed something? But short of turning off "USB Legacy Support" I don't know what to do, and I don't want to do that or I wont be able to use the keyboard in bios in the future.

I can't really keep unplugging for boot then replugging when in windows it as it means I have to go under my desk each time and access is not good.

I've also tried putting it in different usb slots and even tried using my usb hub but still the same problem

So I'm at a loss really. Anyone got a fix for this or any idea's?

Oh and for some reason on a side note when I boot my pc up, the bios setting is reporting 2 keyboards even though only 1 is plugged in. It's a Logitech G15.

Thanks in advance

[Zap]

I've just spent days running Memtest on an Asus board which required Legacy USB to be off but my USB keyboard still worked in the Bios.

Maybe try re-installing the USB Mass Storage driver, perhaps there's a conflict somewhere.

[Agent]

Run Scandisk / The error checking program on the drive and make sure there are no errors on it

[starbuck]

Can't you disable it searching for anything you don't want in bios? I have an ASUS board and the bios allows me to disable it searching for anything I don't want to boot. At the moment, the only thing it will look for is my main HDD.

[kinkladze10]

Could you tell me what part of the bios I need to go to, to stop this hd searching?

I'm not sure which option it is?

If I can stop it searching that could be it.

[starbuck]

from what I can remember, you go into boot options menu(along top) and it should list in what order it searches devices, change 1st one to HDD and each one after that, go into it and there is a disable option.

If you can't find it, post back on here and I'll go into the bios and find the exact part.

[kinkladze10]

Thanks I just had a look, I found the boot options but I couldn't find a way to stop the external HDD from being disabled.

My bios knowledge is pretty lame