Trouble Booting With External USB Drive

I picked up a Seagate FreeAgent external hard drive Friday and am having
problems booting with it connected. The drive works fine if I connect
it after Windows has loaded but if I leave if connected while booting
the computer "hangs". Most of the time when it gets to the step where
it says that it is detecting USB Mass Storage devices it just sits
there. A few times it has detected the drive but then seems to hang
when loading Windows.
The drive is connected to one of the rear panel USB ports on a P5P800
motherboard.
I looked at the BIOS settings but the only setting I saw regarding USB
devices was the time out setting. I tried changing that without any
effect. Is there anything else I can do other than having to unplug the
drive every time Windows decides I need to reboot the computer?

Could your motherboard be looking at the USB drive as a boot device?

If so, might need to adjust settings in BIOS Boot section.

Steve

"Michael W. Ryder" <_> wrote in message
news:23ahk.253966$...
>I picked up a Seagate FreeAgent external hard drive Friday and am having
>problems booting with it connected. The drive works fine if I connect it
>after Windows has loaded but if I leave if connected while booting the
>computer "hangs". Most of the time when it gets to the step where it says
>that it is detecting USB Mass Storage devices it just sits there. A few
>times it has detected the drive but then seems to hang when loading
>Windows.
> The drive is connected to one of the rear panel USB ports on a P5P800
> motherboard.
> I looked at the BIOS settings but the only setting I saw regarding USB
> devices was the time out setting. I tried changing that without any
> effect. Is there anything else I can do other than having to unplug the
> drive every time Windows decides I need to reboot the computer?

Have another look in the BIOS - there should be more settings for
USB than that. I'm not familiar with that particular board, but you
should find settings to enable/disable booting from USB (likely the
problem) and a 'Legacy' setting. Try changing those.

HTH,
--
Rob