# Asus motherboard won't boot with external USB drive connected



## Tidetracker (Jul 30, 2008)

Hi, all...

I'm bringing up a new barebones machine with an Asus P5GC-MX/1333 motherboard. The OS installation went fine, along with installation of several apps. However, after I connected an external 750Gb USB drive (which worked fine when plugged in), the system wouldn't boot... and froze on the ASUS bios screen. After some fooling around, I tried booting with the external drive diconnected... and it worked fine.

I realized that the problem might have to do with the boot sequence, so I went into the BIOS and found that it was set to boot first to CD/DVD, second to an external drive, and third to the internal hard disk... so I disabled the 'boot from external drive' option... and it worked fine.

However, after installing a few more apps, it happened again.... and keeps happening. The BIOS still doesn't show any change to the boot sequence, as I configured it (i.e., 'boot from external drive' isn't in the list), yet the machine still won't boot with the drive connected.

Any ideas?

Please respond to 'masterlabtec' on YIM, if you can..... I'll check this forum from time to time.


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## manic (Aug 2, 2005)

I had the same problem with a asus board. Never did get it figured out.
I just left the thing turned off until I needed it, not a problem really.
Seems like a quirk in bios somewhere. But there is really no need to 
keep the thing powered on all the time., Your drive does have separate
power correct, if so just dont turn in on until you need it. Or dont 
plug the usb input in until you need it.


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