bdwillie Posted April 20, 2023 Share Posted April 20, 2023 Went out to the workshop yesterday and the show computer monitor was just showing a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. Shut it off and rebooted, goes through the Lenovo splash screen then back to a blinking cursor. First thought was the SSD died, but it wasn't saying there was no boot device, just a cursor. Well after troubleshooting for a bit I found something strange. We have an old Bluetooth speaker my wife uses to play bird calls to attract birds for photography. She was streaming the sounds from her phone. This speaker charges in the workshop via USB from the computer and has for years. We had just recently made an mp3 loop of the bird songs on an SD card and put that in the speaker so she wouldn't have to juggle her phone and her camera. Apparently inserting that SD card threw the computer for a loop and caused it to hang on boot. I am assuming it sees the SD card as a boot source. Removed the SD card and the computer boots again just fine. Just though this might save someone else a headache if they are getting just a blinking cursor with no boot. Will go in and change the boot order in case we forget to remove the SD card next time we charge it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted April 20, 2023 Share Posted April 20, 2023 Interesting... You never want any external device to be higher in the boot order than the normal hard drive - EXCEPT if YOU are doing something where you need it. In the latter case, boot into setup and change the order, do whatever you want, and then change the boot order back to normal. Leaving an external device first in the boot order makes it way to east to have someone hack your computer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bdwillie Posted April 22, 2023 Author Share Posted April 22, 2023 On 4/20/2023 at 2:59 PM, k6ccc said: Interesting... You never want any external device to be higher in the boot order than the normal hard drive Jim SOOOO True! usual boot order I always set to is HDD first. I just flashed the BIOS with a critical update ( Lenovo's words not mine🤷♂️) earlier in the week. I am guessing it must have reset the boot order. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimehc Posted April 22, 2023 Share Posted April 22, 2023 By "Default" the BIOS is usually set to boot from a Removable Drive - First.... That is the method used for partitioning the HDD/SDD and applying the OS image to the Drive... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orville Posted April 25, 2023 Share Posted April 25, 2023 On 4/22/2023 at 1:57 PM, Jimehc said: By "Default" the BIOS is usually set to boot from a Removable Drive - First.... That is the method used for partitioning the HDD/SDD and applying the OS image to the Drive... Interesting, every computer I have ever owned, built or worked on always DEFAULTED to an INTERNAL Floppy Drive, then it changed to an INTERNAL Hard Drive, and when the CD Drives came about, started their Default to the INTERNAL CD Rom Drive (recorder) and then the Internal DVD drives too over from there. I've never had one "default" to an EXTERNAL DEVICE unless "I" made that change, and I have never allowed any of my computers to default to an external device for booting, internal devices yes, externals absolutely not. Every time I plug in my external DVD Recorder/Player to my system, as long as there is no DVD or CD in it, whether just a blank or has anything on it, movie, or data, it does the same thing that happened to bdwillie, happens with my computer. Never had any issues with any of my external SD Card readers/writers, never had any issues with external Hard Drives, just external DVD/CD devices, and ONLY if there were a disc in it, no disc, and it would allow my computer to boot up just fine. And it's NOT even listed as a boot device in my BIOS! So, that is sure an odd issue for me anyway, but it happens, and it was a bit tricky tracking down WHICH external device was creating the issue! So now, I usually just leave the DVD Recorder/Writer unplugged until I need to use it, and have had no further issues. But it sure drove me nuts trying to figure out what Hard Drives that was causing the issue, none, which SD card reader/writer, since I also use several of those on my system that was creating the issue, finally found the cuprit was the external DVD Reader/Writer, and those devices are, thus far, the only ones that create this issue on my computers presently in use. And it sure gave me a nice migraine headache tracking it down too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimehc Posted April 25, 2023 Share Posted April 25, 2023 (edited) A Floppy Drive, a CD/DVD drive, a USB Drive and the SD Card are all considered "Removable Media"... No matter if drive bay mounted internally.. Edited April 25, 2023 by Jimehc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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