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External eSATA hard drive hangs system 7 boot.
I have an Dell Studio XPS 9000 with an external eSATA hard drive running Microsoft Windows System 7 Pro.. Booting the machine hangs at "Starting Windows" until I turn the external drive off. Bootstrap then completes. Turn the hard drive back on and it functions normally; chkdsk reports no errors. Anyone have an idea?
Mary G
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March 8th, 2010 10:00
This is caused by the boot order in the bios. You should enter the bios (F2 at first screen) and move the external drive down to the bottom of the boot order. Windows adds it to the top when you install an external drive so it looks for the boot files there first and hangs when it doesn't find them. Don't forget to save the bios setting changes.
TB82
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March 10th, 2010 04:00
I have been having a similar issue with my XPS 9000. My boot order is as you recommend. But, it still appears that the bios is having issues at the "auto-detecting" stage. Even though the eSATA drive is listed second it still appears to be looking for boot files there.
It then gives me the message:
Prmary Master Hard Drive Error
Press F1 to Resume
I press F1 and everything starts fine and the drive is accessible.
Is there a way to get the bios to not try and look for the boot files on this drive?