boot problems

[aerospace1028 at hotmail.com]

Hello list,
I took advantage of having free-time today--while there was no chance predicted for any thunderstorms in the area--to install archlinux on my external harddrive.  I followed all the steps with minimal problem.

Unfortunately, it seems Kyle's warning was correct.  When I start the machine with the drive connected, it still goes straight to Windows.  I'm going to have someone double-check the boot order in the bios to be certain the usb-drive preceeds the internal harddrive.  If it is a case of the external drive not spinning up fast enough for the bios, is there any way to make the computer more patient?  or am I just out of luck?

I made sure that syslinux pointed to the correct drive (/dev/sdb1) instead of its default of /dev/sda3 before rebooting the machine.  I've gone in and copied the UUID from /etc/fstab (I ran genfstab with the -U flag) and pasted it into the sysllinux.cfg entry.  But to the best of my knowledge, the boot process isn't even getting to syslinux.  After the manufacturer's logo screen, it appears to go straight to the Windows logo.  The external drive /is/ spinning, I can hear it working.

Not sure whate else to look at/try.

Thanks :-)
 		 	   		  
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