ESATA/USB/Card Reader causing Win7 to be snotty during boot up

adarryladarryl No Man Stands So Tall As When He Stoops To Help a Child. Icrontian
edited June 2010 in Hardware
Hello everyone. I have an X4-955 build with this motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128378 and this card reader: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820223108.

When I first built this PC, I installed Win XP Pro on it and the machine + card reader + windows worked perfectly. Since then, I have fresh installed Win 7 Home Premium and with the card reader plugged in, I get hard freezes at boot up. If I completely disconnect the card reader (both the USB and SATA lines) everything works normally. If I just unplug the SATA cable and leave the USB plugged into the motherboard, I get freezes again. There have been no other hardware or software changes.

Anyone have any ideas on how to get this hardware to get along with Win 7? Thanks!

Comments

  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited June 2010
    From what I understand, it's technically not a freeze - it's trying REALLY HARD to find something attached to that reader that it might boot from. I've had this issue with card readers, external HDDs, etc. One thing to try might be reconfiguring your BIOS to boot from the hard drive directly instead of letting it go through the removable drives, etc. Let us know what your boot order is and try rejiggering it.
  • adarryladarryl No Man Stands So Tall As When He Stoops To Help a Child. Icrontian
    edited June 2010
    Thanks for the input Snarkasm. All of my drives are SATA and removing all but the HD from the boot priority list now allows the system to boot with the card reader connected. However, it takes about 2 minutes for the PC to boot to desktop so something is still getting in the way. Other thoughts?
  • adarryladarryl No Man Stands So Tall As When He Stoops To Help a Child. Icrontian
    edited June 2010
    Went into Disk Management and found over 100 mb of unallocated space in front of the hard drive. My other Win 7 machine has 9 mb of unallocated space behind the hard drive. I am guessing something went wrong during the Win 7 install to create a 100 mb dummy partition ahead of the main windows partition and that's the reason for hang ups. Guess I will start over with a new install. :/
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited June 2010
    Good luck :/

    I don't have any thoughts about the unallocated space. Hope it works out for you.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited June 2010
    Darryl,

    Win 7 installs a 100mb recovery partition on every new install. You cannot avoid it.
  • adarryladarryl No Man Stands So Tall As When He Stoops To Help a Child. Icrontian
    edited June 2010
    primesuspect wrote:
    Darryl,

    Win 7 installs a 100mb recovery partition on every new install. You cannot avoid it.

    Thanks. Yep, I found that out by doing some research, but I have been grabbing at straws here. When I first built this PC, I put XP on it and everything worked beautifully. Trying to put Win 7 on it has been a nightmare. Last night I used KillDisk to erase the HD and this morning I am trying a new install of 7. If things didn't work so well under XP, I would begin to suspect a hardware problem but there have been no changes. The only change is 7. Hmmm. :/
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