Last night I when I reached home and switched on my machine it froze at the BIOS OEM Logo screen. I panicked but only for a second as it all seemed all too familiar to me. Recent memory of a post on Scott Hanselman's blog helped me fix the problem in under a minute. Turns out my brother had brought a Kingston DataTraveler 1GB USB disc of a friend from his MBA class. He told me he was unable to unplug it as Windows was reporting it as still being used and he forgot to take it out after he switched off the machine.

Although this hasn't happened when either of my Toshiba or Transcend USB drives are plugged in before boot. Had I not read  System won't pass the BIOS POST - Yank external USB drives on Scott Hanselman's blog a few months back, I probably had to waste a couple of frustrating hours before realizing that a simple thing as checking for any plugged external USB drive would have solved the problem pronto. Just wondering if anybody reading this post has ever had a similar experience, where you've benefited in such a way quite simply because you read about a similar experience on someone else's blog?