G50VT and portable HDD's screwing with Boot

has anyone else had any issues with the G50Vt-A1 and having portable HDD's change your windows boot setup?

if i plug my 1TB WD myBook HDD into a USB slot and start the computer it seems to think the HDD is bootable and then proceeds to change my boot loader to a single OS install of XP. which offcourse is not there and thus all the files are missing. upon a restart my laptop is totally unusable... luckily the Win7 DVD can repair the Vista boot loader. it did screw the D: install of win7 htough, had to format the drive and put it back on.

question is, how in gods name can a portable HDD touch my boot loader without my permission?
how are there even any files on there to do that? i clean formatted the drive as NTFS once purchased. The drive itself seems fine, i have heaps of files on there and use it all the time. it does function normally once vista or win7 loads.

Excatly what is the laptop trying to do? its not like there is an install of XP on the portable and it has 2 working OS's on the internal drives. i just cannot imagine why asus would have placed software to auto run and try to change boot loaders etc so surely its the portable HDD. i will see if there is a hidden partition tonight in Disk Management but even if there is, how can my lappy allow it to change boot loader without even asking. weird stuff

boot priority is set to DVD then HDD then external.

i have noticed that since i got the lappy i cannot have the WD external plugged in on boot up. otherwise it just sits there after post.


install notes..
i have Vista 64 installed on C: drive and Win7 64 on D: drive. i don't have XP installed at all.

 

First thing is to head into the BIOS at startup and check that the boot order doesn't have USB device listed ahead of the internal HDD. That's the easiest explanation for your issue.

 

I'd check to make sure you have the latest BIOS version first.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Also, try disabling the external devices from the boot order in the BIOS. Then try booting the system with your WD external drive plugged in and see if it gives you any issues.

 

Your bios is set to boot from removable media first before all others. I would first try removing that boot option completely and see what changes. It is possible that removing the device back and forth can reset the boot order as well which technically is a bios issue. Try disabling boot from any removable divice completely

 

If you read his original post he states "boot priority is set to DVD then HDD then external."

 

I read the original post and if you read mine i said
"It is possible that removing the device back and forth can reset the boot order"

 

My apologizes Eddie, i misunderstood there were two parts to your answer. Hopefully, one of our suggestions will help betc solve his issue

 

ah i see what your saying, i will try leaving it plugged in, check the bios and see if changes the boot order.

cheers guys, its a bit of a mystery. will post back later on with results

 

Another thing is that sometimes it may boot first off USB HDD EVEN THOUGH HDD is set as the first boot device. Reason: it identifies the USB HDD as a normal HDD.

To fix this you need to change the order of the HDDs that it tries: usually an option somewhere under the main boot device ordering, I do not remember the exact name now.

I am not sure whether this setting is persistent once you remove the external. So for the first few times after you remove/reattach the external, it is best to enter BIOS right after plugging in the device without letting the computer boot, and checking to see what the HDDs' ordering is.

If it's not persistent, ALWAYS remember to press ESC when you plug in the external and manually choose the internal to boot from. Or simply never let the external plugged in during bootup.

 

1> i checked the boot order with the USB plugged in and it was below the 2 HDDs
2> boot order, removed portable hdd's completely.
3> i have the latest bios 10.
still tries to access the USB before the 2 internals.

i guess the hDD order thing is not working correctly. i cant remove the USB hdd from that menu either.

ah well, just have to leave it unplugged.