Boot problems

[Chewy]

we had a P4 at the shop for a while that would refuse to boot if an external usb drive was plugged in and powered on, worst durn problem was it hung on a screen where it said press F1 to load setup defaults or F2 to continue

setup defaults turned off the raid stripe which held the boot partition

usb booting bios's are pure evil, who was the idiot that came up with that idea?

[NightTran]

Bill have a nice face but who would want to see him on web cam? A beautiful mind is alot better then beautiful face

[MilesAhead]

I wanted to get back to folks about this one. It seems the PC most of the time does not like my Logitech webcam. Removing it makes the PC boot every time. Now on the rare occasions I webcam (and who the heck would wanna see my ugluy mug, anyway?), I simply plug it into an already booted system.

Thanks to all for their suggestions. And no, don't ask to webcam me!

Regards

Aiyyy!!! USB can be funky. I have to unplug my web cam when I boot
my Image Backup Restore CD. It searches the USB controller looking for
an external drive you might have a backup on, and it hangs if the web
cam is attached. I still have my printer on a 14 year old Parallel Cable(tm).
I've seen posts about Windows dropping printers attached via USB so
I'm not looking forward to using a USB Printer Cable. Just another
headache when the cable I have works perfectly. Unfortunately it seems
none of the new desktop machines come standard with parallel ports.

[blutach]

I'll remember that for when I get a new machine.

Regards

[doctorhardware]

Build your own, for now the motherboards have parallel ports on them. I have problems on occasion with my desktop, will not find the printer or scanner, both are usb. Have to unplug them and then reboot then plug them back in.

[MilesAhead]

You can get parallel port cards for PCI Express x1 slots with Vista drivers.
I guess I'll have to scope out which brands are good before I make any
moves. This little Epson printer I have has both parallel and USB inputs.
I'm wondering how long until parallel is phased out altogether(maybe
never if these USB problems don't go away?)

[doctorhardware]

I don't think that the usb problems will go away for sometime. Just my 2 cents worth.

[MilesAhead]

I don't think that the usb problems will go away for sometime. Just my 2 cents worth.

My inclination is to believe you're right. I just wish they gave a bit more detail
on the specs of these off the shelf systems. If I knew the model I favor would have the same type of slot open then I wouldn't feel too bad about buying a card for a parallel port. I could transfer it to the new machine when the time comes. Seems like the bigger danger is that the cheap printers I like to buy might phase out the parallel input altogether.

[doctorhardware]

But the problem is that most of the pci style will not work with vista, I ran in to this at a previous job. Also could not find any PCI Express x1 slots with Vista drivers at the time. So the computer was returned. And yes the printer companies are phasing out the parallel ports all together, and no more dual usb and parallel port printers also.

[MilesAhead]

If it ain't broken, phase it out I guess. I was hoping to see cheap 10 MB 3 1/2" floppy disks
too. (Back to the topic of Booting Problems.)There's still a bunch of Dos bootable utilities floating around but if you have to write some info you discovered that's kind of a fly in the ointment. You can burn a bootable image to CD but if you have to write a small amount of info to save, such as Partition Table or CMOS where do you put it? Oh well, I guess they take up space but still... guess I'm too into nostalgia(although not enough to long for 5 1/4" paper disks.)

As soon as something works perfectly it's obsolete

[NightbladeXX]

BLu quick ? did you install the web cam software before you plugged in the cam?

[blutach]

Yes, I did. Like it said in the brochure. And it worked for a bit. But now, I will hot swap it (hope that works - haven't had the guts to try to yet - what do they say about guts and glory? )

Regards

[NightbladeXX]

try safe mode driver erase, reboot safe mode, then install the drivers again

disconnect all other non essential USB devices too