My PC doesn't turn on if I plug in my External Hard drive

I noticed this morning that my PC (a really old one) won't turn on if I plug in my Buffalo 1TB HDD. It worked fine before until this morning. I thought that the HDD fried but it still works fine if I plug it into my MacBook Pro. I could still access all the files and such.

I've been using it to back up all of my stuff from my PC.

What's wrong with this thing and how do I fix it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Check your boot order in your bios, see if it looks to boot from an external device or has something listed before your hard drive as its top boot source. If so just change it so that your HDD with your OS is first.

Sorry for the noob question but how do I do that exactly?

Is it where you press F8 when you boot your computer?

So how exactly do I do this then? Where can I find the boot order in my bios?

What happens if you plug it in after the computer boots?C_Rule

If I plug it in after it boots, it works perfectly fine. I could check the files on the external drive.

I just figured out how to change the order of what boots first. I understand that I have to make sure that my internal hard drive boots first, but does it matter what comes after it? Like is there a specific order that it must be in?

You first acess bios and then you usually go to a seciton with left / right arrow and then change boot order / priority it variate of a motherboard all motherboard iv seen in past year use Phoenix Technology Award bios but the interface is different from a motherboard to another the point is once you get into that screen that may look similar to that


you go into boot and choose the order there for USB Drive / External HDD :

How Ever from what i seem to understand you can only boot a Windows from a E-SATA HDD as Far I know if that what you try to do but if it just refuse to work when plugged when you're on ur Window XP / Vista / 7 I don't know the cause really it might not help at all but good luck

also are you sure ur old machine is supporting USB 2.0 ? it might be the reason i don't know what could be the cause sine you said you have really old machine i don't know the spec of the machine and i never experianced a External HDD that refuse to connect to a machine before

Yeah, I've switched which boots first but it still doesn't work. :/

Any other suggestions? I don't know why this started happening because it used to work fine until this morning.

Does anybody have any other ideas?

Strange. At which point does your PC stop?

Also:

Have you tried using different USB ports?

Have you tried booting with different storage devices (a usb stick for example)?

In your BIOS, is there an option to completely disable USB boot? If so try that.

Strange. At which point does your PC stop?

Also:

Have you tried using different USB ports?

Have you tried booting with different storage devices (a usb stick for example)?

In your BIOS, is there an option to completely disable USB boot? If so try that.

Tezcatlipoca666

It stops right after the loading screen for Windows XP. I have tried switching the USBs with the same result. Also, I read online that disabling the USB boot altogether might also disable all my other USB devices (mouse and keyboard). So I'm reluctant to do that. But I might try it if all else fails.