Why won't my computer turn on properly when my two external hard drives are turned on?

Thanks! I tried it and you are right. Its one of them. It will start properly with the one, but not the other. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the hrad drive, it works great, has no viruses or anything. It didn’t use to do it, ever since I had to reformat I’ve had the problem. Thanks for your help!

no prob sweetie…I guess I learned a little from my ex when we had a comp business…he was the tech and I kinda payed attention sometimes! :P

hmm, lets see, so you say the comp wont turn on with the other HD in it…are there importand doc’s on it? I hope you hv them backed up bcz if you dont then you may need to retrieve it by getting a tech to do some data recovery on it (might be pricey!) You may hv to think if the stuff on there is that important bcz today you can get a HD for next to nothing (im talking western digital 2TB not GB for less then $100…of course the time you will spending getting all that stuff on the HD that was on the old HD might be a bit of a pain…but it will cost less then the data recovery & that is if it is even able to retrieve all. :(

I hope it noth like that & just may be over heated or something. You mentioned no viruses, might be the clusters…who knows? :( I am afraid that is as far as my knowledge goes on HD’s. :(

sorry sweetie. good luck.

Thanks much! Its just full of almost 2TB of movies and TV series, not a huge thing as I have most of them burned onto discs. Everything works fine once I get the computer going and turn it back on and its fine if I restart the computer.Its only a problem when I start the computer. I just have to turn it off everytime I start the computer and than turn it back on after, which is a pain in the butt.

Sounds odd, I wish I knew more on how to help…but as long as u hv it backed up on cds, then ur good. See if you can defrag the HD might just need a little touch up. ;)

My guess is it might be in your BIOS (the start up order of your computer) which may say start booting from your external HD first. And maybe, this is a stretch, it starts to boot normally because you have system files on the external that begin the boot up process. What I would do is, if you feel comfortable enough, hit the appropriate Function key (usually F2, F10, or F12) at the beginning of your boot up and find your BIOS start up order. Let me know what you see.

Thanks! I did save a backup on that hardrive, would that do it? I’ll give what you suggest a try. Thank much! I suck at computers, your help is greatly apprecaited

It’s hard for me to figure out what the issue really is without being there. But, now that I think about it, the BIOS order has to be the issue if it is only one of the external HDs giving you the problem . There has to be a certain .exe file or other program that is running when the BIOS runs on that particular external HD. The only way to fix your problem is to either remove the executable file on the external HD (which you don’t have to do because that defeats the purpose of having it backed up) or change your BIOS to bypass your external HDD during boot up.

Thanks! I think I am getting it figured out now that you’ve got me moving in the right direction. Thanks!

all youve told me from what ive read [and ive not read anything else] is that your power button has a split wire. of course all you need to do is find the offending wire and stick some sparky tape round it.

what exactly do you mean when you say it wont turn on properly? i mean how far will it get to getting turned on? lol