USB boot problem

This is from Brian Livingston's column -

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The problem I'm about to describe would have driven me nuts, so I'm
thankful that it's been diagnosed by a faithful reader instead.

The problem is that having an HP All-in-One printer attached to a PC
stops that PC from booting. Norbert Loske explains how he figured this
out and how he fixed it:

"I ran into this quirky problem twice. I recently installed two Dell
Dimension 4600 computers. I installed and configured all software, and
everything was working fine - until I rebooted for a driver install.
The system went to a black screen and would not boot. After nearly an
hour with Dell support, I got nowhere.

"I noticed that if the printer was not connected, the system booted
just fine. A search of knowledge bases led me to HP. They had an
article that explains that their HP 2210 printer may cause some
systems not to boot due to their BIOSes attempting to boot from a USB
device. The HP 2210 printer has a card reader built in. The solution
is to change the BIOS not to boot from USB."

I confirmed this myself by reading HP's Customer Care bulletin. The
problem affects not just HP PSC 2210 printers but also the HP PSC 2170
series. Here's how HP describes it:

"This happens because the computer BIOS (Basic Input Output Software)
has the ability to boot from external USB mass storage devices and
tries to boot from the all-in-one photo card reader, which can be used
as a USB mass storage device. The hardware standards call for the BIOS
to be able to respond to both 32-bit (such as the all-in-one card
reader returns) and 64-bit signals. The BIOS in some computers does
not meet the standard and will only recognize 64-bit signals,
therefore the BIOS continues to wait for a response that it has
already received. This problem may also occur when using any photo
card readers or external USB storage devices with the computer."

So even having a digital camera plugged into a USB port might cause a
computer not to boot!

The HP article asserts that Dell Dimension PCs have the problem, and
prescribes a 7-step procedure to disable booting up from USB devices.
This procedure apparently can be reversed if you ever do need to boot
from a USB hard disk or whatever. Sheesh, I hope I don't run into too
many more mind-wracking gotchas like this one in the near future.