Fresh Installation, Slow Desktop Initilization

[Virtua-Touch]

I have made a fresh installation of Ubuntu 9.10 on my HP SimpleSave 320 GB External Hard Drive, and already experiencing some problems. First I had to jump through hoops to get GRUB to cooperate correctly with my USB ports. (Cannot plug it in the front for some reason, GRUB hangs) Booting the HDD up from the back, Ubuntu will appear in a around 30 seconds. However, when the desktop shows up, it takes around 2 minutes before I can do anything. The mouse and keyboard aren't even recognized at this point. The top left of my desktop where the time, network and sound, and log off button is is missing for about 2 minutes. Is there anyway to fix this problem, because I'd really rather not wait 2 1/2 minutes for my system to boot.

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My system specs just incase:

AMD Athlon II 64 X2 4200+ 3.0 GHz
6 GB of DDR2 Dual Channel RAM
nVidia 9600 GSO w/ 768 DDR3 RAM

Any other info, ask.

[tom4everitt]

Sounds weird, I don't know what it could be. Did you install all updates?

If it doesn't work I would try to install the Lucid beta (ubuntu 10.04) instead, chances are that that works much better. (Its available from ubuntu.com also.)

[Virtua-Touch]

It could also be my computer. The Live CD also waited for the extraraneous USB devices to recognize, but it only took a minute this time. (Probably because there is nothing on a HDD to read, since it's a Live CD.)