Computer freezes during boot if storage devices are plugged into USB ports

[Slick5150]

A friend of mine has a Lenovo 3000 J115 (I think?) desktop, and says that if he has any type of storage device plugged into it when turning it on (external hard drive, flash drive, digital camera, etc..) the computer simply won't boot.

Any thoughts on why this would be and what the solution would be?

 

[drjman]

i think you want to make sure the legacy devices in the BIOS are not disabled (i could be wrong). I have had that problem before and ended up replacing the motherboard.

 

[Slick5150]

Tried that. Didn't change anything. Any other thoughts?

 

[drjman]

it sounds like your mobo has problems recognizing the drive on boot. If it not super old it should be able to see the drive and also be able to boot off of it. LIke i said before, i have had the same problem and the only thing that fixed it was getting a new motherboard.
Does the external drive have its own powersource?
How old is the PC?
does is boot with a memory stick plugged in?

 

[Slick5150]

Originally posted by: drjman
it sounds like your mobo has problems recognizing the drive on boot. If it not super old it should be able to see the drive and also be able to boot off of it. LIke i said before, i have had the same problem and the only thing that fixed it was getting a new motherboard.
Does the external drive have its own powersource?
How old is the PC?
does is boot with a memory stick plugged in?

The computer is only like a year old I think. He says it won't boot in with ANY storage device attached to the USB ports (including an external hard drive, memory stick, and a digital camera that he has)

 

[drjman]

Sounds like something wrong with the usb contollers on the mobo. Not much you can do besides replace the board. Sorry.

 

[Slick5150]

Yeah. apparently he finally called Lenovo about it and they told him that its a known issue but they aren't going to do anything about it. Nice.

 

[LiLithTecH]

What OS (XP or flavor of Vista)?
What BIOS version? (most likely the cause as they have fixed USB issues 3 times)

If your friend believes anything a lackey helpdesk support jockey who is following a
script written in another language then they are used to, I wish him good luck in life.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Slick5150
Yeah. apparently he finally called Lenovo about it and they told him that its a known issue but they aren't going to do anything about it. Nice.

That's pretty amazing.

 

[Slick5150]

Originally posted by: LiLithTecH
What OS (XP or flavor of Vista)?
What BIOS version? (most likely the cause as they have fixed USB issues 3 times)

If your friend believes anything a lackey helpdesk support jockey who is following a
script written in another language then they are used to, I wish him good luck in life.

Its XP, but I don't think it makes any difference. I had him upgrade it to the latest BIOS version but that didn't help anything. He talked to 3 different people there now who all told him the same thing, that its a hardware problem but they don't consider it to be something they need to replace since the computer will boot without the devices plugged in.