I had the same problem some years ago.
But with a mouse!
Mouse plugged, no boot, mouse unplugged, no problem...
Ended up getting another putter...
Good luck!   :)
ET 

Mark Phillips writes: 

> I have an older laptop running Debian testing with two USB drives attached.
> If I remove the drives, it boots normally. If I leave the drives connected,
> it gets stuck at the first boot screen where it asks to go into the boot
> menu. However, the function keys don't seem to work. 
> 
> I suspect that the machine is confused and may think it can boot from the
> usb drives. I only want it to boot from the internal hard drive. The USB
> drives are just for data. I am using this machine as a "headless" server,
> and I ssh into it when I need to. I am pretty sure this is not a bios
> problem, as the machine has always booted from the internal drive, so it is
> set up that way. This odd behavior started after an apt-get update/upgrade
> quite awhile ago. 
> 
> How can I get the machine to reboot correctly (straight to the hard drive)?
> Every time I update the beast, I have to crawl under the table to
> disconnect the usb drives, boot, then reconnect the drives. 
> 
> Thanks, 
> 
> Mark
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