Boot up problems after power spike

Hi all:
My MSI computer was running along fine until last Sunday. On a clear day, a power surge came threw and my computer was in the middle of backing up to a usb remote hard drive.
Now, the computer only will boot if I disconnect the hard drive and then reconnect it. If I don't do this, the bios hangs and never reaches the windows load process. The hard drive makes a repetitive "eee" sound as well.
Hard Drive damaged or crashing? Why does it work when I disconnect the hard drive and reconnect it?
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Civitas

You run Vista? And it is the USB hard disk that makes a fuzz, right?
However, I think there might be something else the matter with your system. If it was a power surge it would hit more than an external USB thing.
Pull power plug out. Disconnect external things, mostly at the rear of the case of course, but also the USB disk. Hit the power button a couple of times. Then clear CMOS. Reattach things and power up again.

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