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?

"Michael W. Ryder" wrote in message
...
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