Can't Boot If USB External Drive Attached
Dec 12, 2009
We just bought a WD 2TB My Book Elite external hard drive. When we boot the computer into Windows 7 and plug in the USB cable, the drive is recognized and assigned a drive letter. Everything looks normal--we can access the drive, read files on it, copy files to it, etc. However, next time we power up the computer, if this drive is attached, the computer won't boot. The Dell BIOS splash screen comes up and sits there for a while, then the screen goes black--and absolutely nothing else happens. If we then disconnect the drive and start the computer again, it boots normally. The external drive has the latest firmware and software installed, and we have the most current BIOS installed.
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Nov 21, 2010
i just bought an external HD drive and it's very good but ... When I attach my external hard drive start up becomes painfully slow , like at least 5 times slower !. I get past the BIOS load screen fine but once the computer gets to the Starting Windows screen it sits there for a good 30-60 seconds. Then when the screen goes black (as it's going from the "starting windows" screen with the little windows 7 icon to the login screen) it again sits for anywhere from 1-2minutes, if not longer.i have an old external HD and I've been using it for 2 years and never had this problem !another thing when i click on " safely remove the HD " before i reboot and without taking the usb off the computer just stats normally !
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Feb 16, 2012
prevent users from removing a attached VHD from "Safely remove hardware and eject media", We have had multiple users eject the VHD when they are going to unplug their USB and they are ejecting the attached VHD instead.
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Jul 15, 2012
From a fresh start up of the computer, I can get my thumbnails to generate any where on my computer, the NAS, or the USB attached to the NAS. However, after a short period (not specific, can be 5 mins or 30 mins), the USB drive attached to the NAS will no longer generate thumbnails, however, everywhere else still does (ie local files or even NAS files).
I have multiple machines, and it happens on this machine only (brand new only 2 weeks old, fresh windows 7 installed only 2 weeks ago).
I am using Windows 7 64bit Ultimate, but so are the other 2 windows 7 machines, and they do not forget to show thumbnail previews after a little while.
- "Always show icons, never thumbnails" from folder options is UNTICKED. - tried all options from here Thumbnail Previews - Enable or Disable - Windows 7 Forums (with everything set to enable thumbnails)
What seems to happen is that it suddenly forgets that thumbnails are enabled, but only for that specific drive. Using the link above, it should always be the first example "EXAMPLE: Thumbnails Enabled in Windows Explorer" but when it decides to stop working it becomes "EXAMPLE: Thumbnails Disabled in Windows Explorer", however, it only effects that one specific USB device attached to my NAS.
It has to be a Windows 7 issue on this machine only, as all my other Windows 7 and XP machines always show thumbnails. As far as I know, all the Windows 7 machines have exactly the same software loaded (I re-formatted them all about 2 weeks ago when the new machine was built).
If I restart the computer all thumbnails are working again until it no longer likes me.
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Nov 12, 2009
Does anyone know if it is possible to boot from an external USB optical drive?
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Dec 6, 2009
I've just got a new HP laptop with windows 7 Home Premium.
Anytime Upgraded to Ultimate.
i want to boot to windows XP (SP2) on this new laptop..(Not necessarily Dual-Boot). there is only on program i need to use under XP.
the dual-booting tutorials here are quite in depth and potentially problematic for none techie like me. i would prefer not re-partion the drive and 'hide' one operating system from the other, so what i would prefer to do is this...
1. Plug in an External hard drive (USB 2.0).Clean and factory formatted.
2. Go into my BIOS > Disable boot from internal hard drive > enable boot from CD Drive (first)
3. Exit BIOS having saved changes
4. insert win XP Install disk in drive.
So, in theory XP Install should be like on a brand new machine.
when i want to use windows 7 i would reverse the BIOS changes and make sure external drive with XP is not connected.
So, windows 7 would not know XP is even in use.
Is all this viable... or is there something that would prevent it from working?
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Jan 31, 2012
I've got a XP Pro laptop I'm about to decommission but I've got programs I don't want to lose. I know there are programs that claim to be able to bring programs over from one machine to another but the results don't live up to the claims. I was wondering if I could take the hard drive out, place it in an enclosure and boot from it on my new Win7 Home Premium laptop when I want to use my existing XP programs. Alternately, I have my old laptop C drive backed up using Acronis. Could I "restore" it to a new partition on my Win 7 machine. I know that certain things like hardware drivers etc. won't work as it, but if the programs worked, that'd be fine with me. The rest could be worked on as needed.
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May 23, 2012
I am planning to move to another country and do not want to transport my desktop Win XP system.If I were to buy a new laptop maching can I set up the hard drive from my desktop, as an external device,so that the new laptop can boot from that external drive? My XP drive is SATA.I really did not know how to categorize this question so I Windows 7, assuming the new laptop would have that OS.
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Aug 16, 2012
I have mini dell laptop. The laptop was hit with a bad virus it was wiped out so I am trying to reinstall windows 7 so need to know how to reboot it from a external drive.
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Nov 21, 2011
I wanted to back up my data files using the supplied backup utility in Win 7 64bit. I run the program and under Backup Destination all I see is my DVD Drive and no way to change to another destination. So under Devices with Removable Storage(1) I see the drive. In my Network locations I created a Share called Backup which I created
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Dec 30, 2009
I have a Dell Inspiron 1440 laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. Some of my older applications do not support this platform. My processor does not support Window Virtual PC and Windows XP mode so I was hoping to add XP as a dual boot. Is it possible to boot XP from an external harddrive or USB instead of having to partition the internal hard drive. Or do you have any suggestions on how I can load XP after Windows 7 is already loaded.
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Jan 13, 2012
I'd like to boot a Win 7 laptop from an external hard drive with XP and software installed. Probably use a USB port input from the drive through an adapter. Is it possible to boot XP that way and read and write personal files on the drive? The drive is eSATA and is Windows 7 compatible.
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Feb 7, 2012
I have windows 7 with a Verbatim 1TB external drive, the system is not recognising the external drive. When I switch it off and back on again it then recognises it and loads it in My Computer. I have another external USB drive which works just fine. This problem started after I formatted the PC and reinstalled windows 7. It worked fine before under the same OS. I tried another wire and plugged it into another port but still have the same problem.
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May 1, 2009
can I dual boot using an ext. Hard drive. I found an old 250gb phanton hd I've never used. Figured I could throw it in there. Would vista dual boot to that. Or no??
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Feb 12, 2012
I am using a Windows 7, 64bit machine with an attached network drive I use for streaming my media. The manufacturer is Seagate (2TB) STAM2000. So, I have two folders in this drive:
TV Shows
Movies
combined there is just 500gb. So, the Seagate NAS tells me the drive is full. I right click on the drive and chose properties. I then chose Quota Settings. Here it says: To change these settings click Quota settings. I do this anf nothing happens. It looks as if this option is to prevent one user from filling the drive. I also connected a WD NAS and the same option appears.
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Jan 19, 2013
My laptop recently crapped out, so I removed the HDD and connected it to my desktop. It says that all my files are there based on size, but I can't see/ access all of them. It is a SATA drive, directly connected, everything seems to be working fine, except I cannot find the files it says are there.
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Jan 17, 2013
One of my Dell systems took a dive (no power, etc.) so I pulled out the hard drive and hooked it up to this Dell Vostro 260 so the person could have access to their files. I've checked the BIOS to boot from it, but nope, doesn't work. The system goes black, little cursor for a moment then asks me if I want to run repair to start normally. I've tried repair and normally but still can't boot from this external. The system does see it, so I'm really not sure what to do
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Oct 11, 2012
My Acer netbook has developed some kind of fault and I am unsure as to what I ought to do. The netbook does boot to BIOS and also will boot up from an external drive...but will not boot normally. I am thinking of replacing the hard drive but don't know if there could be something else wrong. It says sometimes that it can't read it and from this I am not sure if there is something else wrong. If I change the drive does it sound as though things will work? There are also a couple of other intermittent faults such as certain letters and numbers not working and then everything is fine for a while...
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Jun 6, 2010
I just restarted my PC and i kept getting erros regarding hardware, at first it would just hold at updating dmi pool , after i reset the bios to fail safe defaults it would then give me the I/O error. I noticed my external drive was turned off and I turned it on and windows booted fine. Is there a connection here i can disable?
Windows is installed on my SSD drive not my external.
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Jan 12, 2013
What happened to my computer is, I kept getting the BSOD, I went into safe mode, removed the most recent programs I had installed, and it stopped happening. I then proceeded to plug in my external hard drive. It was not recognizing it for some reason, so I went to disk management. It was listed there, just without a drive letter. I tried to assign it a drive letter, and it gave me an error message saying something about refreshing the list, (this is the error message I should have researched), I tried refreshing the drive list, and tried reassigning the drive letter, same message. I right clicked on the drive again, and I saw mark as active. For some stupid reason, I clicked on this. Then seeing that it didn't do anything, I thought maybe restarting the computer would maybe do the trick. Now my computer won't boot.
It gets to the windows logo, and boom, restarts all over again. I tried many things like, startup repair, system restore, marking partition as active CMD, with diskpart, I also tried some of the commands in bootrec.exe. By the way, if this helps at all, my hard drive is a solid state drive, I also have a slave drive in there which does also have a copy of windows installed on it, (it was my old hard drive), I tried setting that as my primary boot and it boots into my old install of windows, before i got my solid state drive. Is there a way I can fix the startup by having access to it from an operating system instead of the recovery environment?
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Mar 7, 2011
Can I boot my Windows 7 or XP PC into a USB mode where the computer can be used simply as an external USB drive? Mac has this feature and it can be very convenient for large file transfers.how do I connect two PC to swap the files. Win 7 to XP?
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Jan 4, 2012
I had an issue where Windows 7 would not boot anymore, getting error, BOOTMGR missing, Press Alt-Ctrl-Del to restart. I have tried to repair with windows disk but still getting error. I have decided that I want to just do a reinstall but I want to get on and export my favorites and grab a couple other things. I used to have a CD that I could use to boot up with (Think it was called Barts Boot Disk, Been too long) to get into Windows XP and do a couple things. My question is, is what is the best boot disk that will allow me to copy files from the HD to my external drive before I refresh?
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Jun 21, 2010
Is it possible to dual boot windows 7 and ubuntu, with ubuntu on a external hard drive? I can connect my external hard drive via USB 2.0, USB 3.0 or E-SATA. I want windows 7 as my main OS.
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Oct 23, 2011
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Jan 21, 2012
I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 (2.5 years old). All my data is backed up so I have no concerns about recoverying data.First, the laptop crashed and ran several chkdsk on start up. I froze several times during this. It said it had fixed some errors then started up again.This time it wanted to do start up repair. Same thing kept happening, froze at least twenty times during this. Eventually it gave me the blue screen of death.
'Technical information
*** STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x0000000000000003, 0xFFFFFA8004C1D260, 0xFFFFFA8004C1D498, 0xFFFFF8000130DDA0)'
This repeated several times. I ran the diagnostics and it told me the hard drive could not be found (error code 0146, 2000-0146). Essentially, it's a Dell laptop (I know) and I am not bothered about recovering the hard drive.I would, however, like to install Windows 7, or alternatively Linux, onto my external hard drive. But I just can't seem to get it to work.I have extracted a Linux iso to the external hard drive I want to install on, onto a cd, onto a FAT32 8gb usb stick, but it has given me the bootmgr is missing error every time. I have tried it with the interal HDD in and removed.I am no longer concerned about the internal HDD, i can use it for a door stop for all I am concerned, I just want to load ANY os onto my external hard drive so I can get the laptop working.
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Mar 28, 2012
my desktop computer won't boot. When I turn it on it displays the welcome splash screen and then goes black. A message will then display that says CMD failed to start and then it will shut down. It does the same thing in safe mode as well.My question is. I have already set up the HD from the desktop as an external to my laptop so I could get files off it. Is there any way to do system restore on the hard drive when it is set as an external? Because I did this last night and I think if I restore the drive it will fix it.
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Aug 21, 2012
I have a USB external hard drive that I keep all my documents etc on (had it for years)I upgraded from Vista Home to & Home Premium then had to upgrade recently to Professional to run my Sage. Through all these upgrades my ext. drive ran fine. Occasionally the drvie letter would change if I had something else plugged into the USB, this was always easily corected in disk management by changing the drive path.The connection on the case packed up so I had to get the drive put into a new case, now when I plug it in the drive is assigned G instead of F, I tried to change the drive letter allocation in Disk Management but it won't let me as the program still thinks I have a second ext. hard drive which is labelled F. I suspect this has happened because when the usb connection broke the drive was disconnected suddenly instead of a proper eject.How do I get Disk Management to remove the inactive drive - i can't find any obvious way - eject, delete etc are all missing when I click on tools or tasks.
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Nov 13, 2012
Low disk space, Can transfer data on D drive to an external hard drive
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Feb 19, 2012
Why do files moved to an external drive not behave the same as those same files in an internal drive? I noticed that if I do anything to a file that is in an external drive, that file can not be saved under the same name (read only). In order to do so one must save it internally and then copy or move it to the external drive.So I did just that--I copied a file from taken from an external drive, saved it in the internal one and then copied it back to the external one. Now if I r-click the propeerties of these 2 same files and then go to the 'Security' tab a difference is immediately apparent: The internal one has -1- System & -2 My-computername (user-PCuser and -3- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators) with all 3 accounts allowing all (full control, read, write, etc..). While the external drive has in Properties; -1- System -2- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators) and -3- Users (user-PCUserrs) with this final 3d one (and different one) with no Allow for "full control, or modify or write. So how does one have all its files in this external drive behave and be equal to all the same files in the internal drive?Since -3- Users (user-PCUserrs) in the external drive is that which is differnt from the internal drive I was wondering if it is OK to delete this Permission or 'attribute' or whatever it is called and create instead one equal to the one in the internal drive -3- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators)? ANd of course doing so in one go and not file after file after file individually?
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Feb 19, 2012
Why do files moved to an external drive not behave the same as those same files in an internal drive? I noticed that if I do anything to a file that is in an external drive, that file can not be saved under the same name (read only). In order to do so one must save it internally and then copy or move it to the external drive. So I did just that--I copied a file from taken from an external drive, saved it in the internal one and then copied it back to the external one. Now if I r-click the propeerties of these 2 same files and then go to the 'Security' tab a difference is immediately apparent: The internal one has -1- System & -2 My-computername (user-PCuser and -3- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators) with all 3 accounts allowing all (full control, read, write, etc..). While the external drive has in Properties; -1- System -2- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators) and -3- Users (user-PCUserrs) with this final 3d one (and different one) with no Allow for "full control, or modify or write. So how does one have all its files in this external drive behave and be equal to all the same files in the internal drive? Since -3- Users (user-PCUserrs) in the external drive is that which is differnt from the internal drive I was wondering if it is OK to delete this Permission or 'attribute' or whatever it is called and create instead one equal to the one in the internal drive -3- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators)? ANd of course doing so in one go and not file after file after file, individually, would be ideal.
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Jul 16, 2011
I am running Windows 7 Pro. Have a external dual dock connected to a estata port. One of the drives assigned letter K often comes up as E and I have to change as application is looking for K. Another disk in this dock works fine. No problems. why this might be happening or anyway to prevent? Seems like when I go to disk management and assign K it should stay that way.
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