Boot issue with USB HD

I called dell about the same issues. i changed the boot sequence as well in the bios and that made the start up go quickly, like it did before i updated the bios to 2.4.2. The boot sequence was checking the optical drives which was taking so much time.

I already removed it from the bio boot menu.  Maybe I did not do it right.  What I did was to just delete the number by each device until the only thing left was the onboard SATA hd.  The other entries are still there, but with no number.  It looks like that should do it.

wlopatin,

 

Your USB External Drive is the culprit. When Windows boots XP or Vista it has to enumerate (or basically activate) the USB ports and determine what is on them. This means that your USB HD has to spin up and respond that it is OK. Thats part of what causes the delay on boot. I have yet to figure out why external HD's cause the screen to blank and then come back (my old 8200 did the same thing to my 2405FPW monitor). I ditched my external USB drive in favor of ESATA when I got XPS 700.

 

Regards - MichaelO

Yes, It still has to see the drive on the USB port so it knows what kind of device to recognize and where. On my XPS 700 I have at least 8 USB devices plugged in. If I unplug them all I can cut 15 or 20 seconds off the boot time. Instead, I take a little more time getting that warm beverage in the morning. Actually, I have my machine boot itself at 6:30 every morning so its up and waiting when I walk into my office.

 

Regards - MichaelO

So you're saying that it does this even though I have set the BIOS as described above so it will not try to boot from that drive.

Well, very clever idea.

 

Actually my old 8100 had this same USB HD and I did not detect any boot time difference.  Maybe it was just so slow that I didn't notice.  With this XPS410, the time is either about 10 sec or 40 sec so the extra 30 seconds is very noticeable.

 

I wonder, does this have something to do with VISTA?

It did it to me on my old Dimension 8200 with XP and the only reason I ever noticed wa that it rebooted the USB drive (Buffalo DriveStation 160) and the monitor. You are right my old machine booted so slowly that I never would have noticed.

 

I think Windows Home Server may be a nice answer for getting rid of a lot of these external HD's. Also my XPS has 4 bays and I have drives in them all. There is also a new technology coming called SteelVines that is going to let you Daisy chain Esata drives and configure them dynamically. I was reading about that this morning on Tomshardware.com. Take a look - its really cool.

 

Regards - MichaelO

Thanks for getting back to me. 

 

I think I have already removed usb from the bios drive setting.  I may be missing something.  Here is what I see under boot:

 

 1.  WDC WD3200AAKS-755BA

 2.  onboard SATA hard drive

      onboard or USB floppy drive  (not present)

      onboard or USB CD-ROM drive

      USB drive

 

 

It says that devices with no number are set not to boot.

 

With my USB drive plugged in, there is about a 1 minute hesitation after the screen with the green bar and before the VISTA login screen.  During this time, my monitor shuts off completely; that is the green light blinks rather that staying on.

 

Without the USB drive plugged, this 1 minute hesitation does not exist and the one screen follows the other in a matter of few seconds.

 

Am I missing something?  Should I call tech support?

 

Thanks again.

OK, I looked and the entry I see there is "USB CONTROLLER".  That was ON and I set it to NO BOOT as you suggested.

 

there was no effect; I still have the same 1 minute stall during boot up as described.

 

Thanks for answering, I hope you have another idea.  Should I call DELL support or is this just normal and I have to live with it?

Looked in the VISTA section, but I don't see anything interesting.  I am not even sure if the problem is with VISTA since the hangup comes before the logon screen.