Pro Tools won't launch without external USB Drive

[charpold]

I've searched the threads here, but didn't see this problem. Please send me a URL if I missed it.

I'm running Pro Tools LE 8.0.1 on an iMac (still Mac OS X 10.5.8) with an MBox 2. Until recently, everything worked great.

A few weeks ago, I had an external USB disk attached while I was editing so I could pull in a couple of music bed files stored there.

Now, Pro Tools will not launch unless I have this external USB disk attached.
I get no error message, nothing crashes, it simply hangs after the initial splash screen and completion of the "loading" status bar. Once I attach the drive, as soon as it is recognized (before it finishes spinning up, certainly before it can mount), Pro Tools will instantly finish launching and bring up the "Open Session/ New Session" dialog.

I've tried all of the steps in the General troubleshooting thread - all to no avail.

I have deleted files manually, with the Tech Support Utility, and with the Pref and Database Helper.

I've just finished un-installing and re-installing (twice - wasn't sure I had done it exactly as directed the first time), and Pro Tools still will not complete launching without this drive attached.

What's going on here? How can I fix it?

Many thanks...

Curt