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System Freezes at POSTwhen USB Ext Drive ON

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by goldenbarstewart

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I have noticed that on some systems running WinXP SP2 that the system freezes at the inital stages of POST when an external USB HDD is on. If the external USB drive is powered off, the system boots normally. I also noticed the same problem with a USB printer, which when on produces the same result (system freezes at initial stages of POST,) but when the printer is powered off the system boots up normally. Any suggestions?

12 replies

by mdphoenix

With the hard drive, I'd say check your boot sequence. Most computers over the past 4 years will boot off USB devices - Flash drives, external hard drives, etc. if they're bootable and connected at POST. I guess it's possible that it's trying to boot from your external drive. Check your BIOS settings and either turn off booting from USB capability, or move the USB external devices in the boot sequence.

Now that I think about it.. the printer could be going through the same thing IF it has card readers in it. Right at POST, the computer might see those card readers as drives and try to boot from them as well. Again, this would all be dependent on your boot sequence, I'd think.

Let us know if any of this fixes your issue.

Good luck!

by goldenbarstewart

I checked the boot sequence. Order is - floppy - hard drive - DVD ROM. Boot Other Devices - no. Also checked to see if there were any conflicts in Device Manager - there appears to be none. Any other suggestions - has anyone else run into this problem??

by mdphoenix

I was pretty certain I had it nailed.

Is there a BIOS update available for your computer? If you're not sure, post up the make and model and I'll see what I can find. Also, the BIOS revision would help. Post up what kind of box it is and I'll try to help you find the revision number as well.

by jngoodpasture

I just purchased a DEll Vostro 400. Boot stalls at post when my Maxtor 300 GB external hard drive is connected. I have changed the boot sequence (intially it was the same as yours) to put hard drive first - and disabled the "Boot from other device" selection - still didn't work. So I changed the boot settings back to the way they were, and I have been reconnecting the external hard drive after I reboot, which is not often. Still not really a good solution, just a goofy fix! Any ideas???

by ugadata

You may want to look in Device Manager at the IRQ's for the the USB controllers and the controller of boot drive.

If the USB controller and the IDE? or Sata controller are sharing an IRQ then this could be the problem.

If you have more available USB ports try plugging into a USB port that is on a different USB controller (easier said then to determine which is which)

You can also rearrange IRQ manually (not fun, not recommended)

by goldenbarstewart

I checked the Resources of the IDE controllers and the USB controllers and they are all different. The external drive was plugged into an externally powered USB hub. when I removed the hub and plugged the Drive into an alternate USB port, the problem disappeared. Thank you for your help.

by mg_roberts

i was going to suggest using a different USB port. not all the usb ports on the motherboard function the same way, or are manufactured with the same compatibility. for instance, you may have two 2.0 ports and two 1.1 ports on the back of the board. plugging in something such as a USB 2.0 HDD or USB 2.0 printer with flash drives built in into a 1.1 port on the motherboard will cause this delay at boot. chances are it wasn't freezing on boot either, if you waited a few minutes, it would have continued through the normal boot process.

what's complicated about this, is even the newest most hi-performance motherboards still use legacy usb connectors, and they generally aren't documented as such.

by sgt_shultz

does this usb drive have 2 usb connections? are you plugged into both of them (for sufficent power) do you have usb 2.0 support on your pc. does cable support usb 2.0

by goldenbarstewart

The MB is MSI 845E Max (MS-6566E)ATX and they do indicate USB 2 support. The cable came with the external drive which is indicated to be USB 2.

by goldenbarstewart

Micro-Star Inc. MS-6566E 1.0
Board: Micro-Star Inc. MS-6566E 1.0
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 07.00T 04/02/01
I use MSI Live Update 3 and have recently updated the BIOS but problem persists.
The USB drive is a 3.5 SATA in an external enclosure and is separately powered. when this drive is off the computer boots normally.

by goldenbarstewart

Thanks for that - I always wondered why plugging a USB peripheral into one of the ports on the same computer always came with with a message saying that 'this peripheral would work faster if plugged into a USB 2.0 port. Click here to locate a USB 2.0 port.' There are four controllers listed in Device Manager - only one of them (the first) indicates that it is a USB 2.0 Enhanced Host controller 24CD. This motherboard is advertised as providing USB 2.0 support. So who's to know that only some of the ports are USB 2.0?

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