Why does firewire prevent MacBook Pro from booting from time to time?

[steffi]

This has been the case for at least the last 3 machines I've had. Occasionally if you have firewire 800 plugged in the machine will not boot or sometimes the machine will hang and go into spinning wheel and only if you unplug firewire will it come out of it's hung state?

When you boot you sometimes end up a white screen and only if you unplug FW800 will you get past that point.

 

[tlauer1]

This has been the case for at least the last 3 machines I've had. Occasionally if you have firewire 800 plugged in the machine will not boot or sometimes the machine will hang and go into spinning wheel and only if you unplug firewire will it come out of it's hung state?

When you boot you sometimes end up a white screen and only if you unplug FW800 will you get past that point.

The same thing happens to me when I have my scanner attached via Firewire 800. Although, my Firewire 800 hard drives don't seem to bother the boot sequence.