Problem with Windows 7 Booting when WD Passport essential Plugged In

I have a WD Passopart Esential 500 GB. Whenever i leave it attached to my laptop and try to restart, the PC will shut down but when it will restart, it will just show my the HP screen and stuck there, UNLESS i remove the WD external hard drive?

 I have tested this on atleast 2 laptops. Till the time WD HD is plugged in, the laptop will not go past the HP screen.

Why?

Did you look in BIOS and make sure of the boot order?

Joe

Boot order?

What the boot order has to do with it? Whatever the seqeunce of booting may be, the PC should move forward if it is not getting the item on it’s boot menu.

Let’s say the first one is CD, and if there’s no CD inside the ROm, it will just move on to the next, it wouldnt mean that it should get stuck.

Also i have checked this isse on 2 laptops, and it gives the same problem, so both the PCs cant be ‘wrong’

If the USB is ahead of HD it can hangup there because the drive is not bootable. Try moving it after. Most PCs today come with USB first.

Joe

Rag888 wrote:

Boot order?

 

What the boot order has to do with it? Whatever the seqeunce of booting may be, the PC should move forward if it is not getting the item on it’s boot menu.

“should” is the keyword there. Many BIOSs don’t work the way they “should”.

Ok thanks for your replies, I will check my boot options later, I mean i am backing up my computer right now so cant restart it. So for I have another question; assuming that the solutions you guys have provided the WD HD has no more issues of making the PC stuck, please tell me how to go about the ‘WD Unlocker’ if i want to restore my data from a backup that I have placed on my WD HD?

I mean let’s say I have backed up my data on the WD HD either my Acronis True Image or Windows Imgae Creating option and I have also done one out  of the following:

Either have created a System Repair Disc from Windows (the one that let you boot from if your computer has crashed and let you perform system repair or restore your data from a backup placed on an external HD).

or

I have activated the ‘Acronis Startup Recovery Manager’ i.e. it would allow me to hit F11, take me to Acronis just as I boot so that I can restore my data from an external HD like the WD passort essentials.

Now the questions is that once I am inside Acronis Startup Recovery Manager before booting into windows and want to browse for a backup placed on the WD HD, surely it would not show up in Acronis as the WD HD is still LOCKED, so how to unlock it then? i mean without booting into wndows.

I have only 2 options in my mind for this;

1-Either move the backup to another external HD that doesnot have the ‘Locking’ thing on it.

2-Somehow disable  WD HD’s lock permenantly.

Removing the Password should take care of the unlocker. If you don’t want to use the Smartware you don’t need it installed. Without Smartware it should work like a regular drive.

Joe

1 Like

Ok, so how to remove the password?

i have dont have the WD Smartware installed, didnt install it myself since I have bought this new laptop. The password was set through my older laptop on which I installed the Smartware and locked the drive. I am still using the same password.

When I bought this new laptop, I just plugged the WD HDD and it just gave me the Unlocker to unlock the drive, so can I reomve the passowrd now without installing the Smartware?

P.S. I am guessing the PC gets stuck on the first screen (on reboot with the WD HDD still attached) can also be attributed to the ‘Lock’, may be when I remove the password the WD HDD will not hang the PC on a reboot, no?

Ok, I found it.

Just removing the password did it all.

I installed the Smartware, removed my password and now even if I reboot my laptop with the WD HDD plugged in, the computer will boot correctly.

So like I predicted, it was the Unlocker (or the password) that was preventing the computer to boot once the WD HDD was plugged into it.

After the removal of the password, the WD HD is working like an ordinary external HD.

Stil,l thanks to Joe for his help.