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I recently had a technician install my new internal HD for me, after I had run into a minor issue. You can read about it here.

Onwards, I now have another problem. When I have all of my components and devices connected to my computer, most especially my external HD, my computer doesn't reboot. I can restart it but it won't get past the black splash screen unless I unplug my external HD from my computer and reboot once again. I consulted my technician about it and he said that it might be either due to the fact that my computer is trying to boot from my external HD or simply because my new HD takes up too much power.

Does anyone have any reasonable solutions or troubleshooting steps to see what the issue is and from thereon, possibly fix it?

Thats what I would have guessed too, when you updated your BIOS, it may have changed your settings back to default, which changes the external HD to boot first. What you'll want to try first so that we know whether that is the issue or not, is to try changing the boot order to load from your original SATA HD instead, since thats the one that you've installed Windows 7 on if I'm correct?

The reason I would think that the boot order is the problem is because you say that you can't get past the black screen, it might be trying to boot your External HD which doesn't have the formatted Windows 7 OS installed. So it's looking for files that don't exist on that Hard drive to try and boot your Operating System instead. What is your External HD if you dont mind me asking?

If you don't know what the settings are, you can also try selecting the option in the BIOS for Loading the Default settings. But then you'd have to check to see if it's set to RAID and all that for the SATA hard drive. Since the default, i'm not sure, but it might not choose RAID right away.

But first try changing the boot order to not looking at your External HD first. I think thats probably the problem. Since I remember you had The SATA Hard disk set to the third IDE in the last thread. When you put in your External HD it might put that one as your 1st Primary IDE.

Your SATA hard drive I dont think should take up too much energy from your power box since they or more energy efficient than PATA.

Quote:What is your External HD if you dont mind me asking?

My Book Essential (500GB)

And I'll give it a shot. I just need to make sure that the order is actually set to boot my external before I change it for no reason.

I'll report back here with my results.