T30 hardware/software change causing shutdown

[marco1]

I plugged in a usb external hardrive and was immediately prompted that a hardware/software change had occurred and that the computer needed to be shutdown in order to protect the system. Now all I can do is boot to safe mode...Any thoughts?

Thankyou in advance

[agarza]

Maybe there could be a conflict in the USB driver because is very weird to get a BSOD?? when plugging an external HDD drive

[rkawakami]

Two questions:

1) If you unplug the external USB HD, does the system boot normally?

2) Does the external hard drive contain a BOOTABLE operating system? If so, I would not recommend having two bootable drives attached to the computer at the same time.

[marco1]

Hi there
No if you unplug the external drive it still doesn't boot other than safe mode and no the external harrdrive has no software. I have a toshiba zt series laptop also which accepted the external drive. I guess the only thing to do is re-format?
thx

[rkawakami]

What OS are we talking about here? You should be able to press the F8 key just before Windows starts booting and then select an action to perform (boot normally, last known good setting, safe mode, etc.). Have you tried that?

[marco1]

Hi there
Safe mode is the only option that works with f8. Last known config just hangs on the XP start logo. In safe mode there are no conflicts in device manager
thx

[rkawakami]

The only thing that I can suggest is to remove all hardware except the HD and try bootting normally. Make sure that there is nothing plugged into the USB port, remove any Ultrabay device, ethernet, modem, wireless, PCMCIA cards etc.