Adrian - the jumper on the HDD in the USB unit is set to CS, but the HDD is never turned on when I boot up So it's not active. also it's never plugged in. The only thing related to it that is plugged in is the USB cable into the PC, but the other end of it isn't actually connected to the USB HDD

For some reason tho, I am thinking the problem lies with my Flash Card reader. It's a USB plug in device which reads a bunch of cards, and also has a 16mb internal flash disk. Never had a problem before with it, but the last time I booted up, I coudln't get the PC to fully boot untill I unplugged the flash card reader