Occasional booting problem - Toshiba/Vista

[Prime]

Have a Toshiba Tecra which has occasional booting problems that seem to be becoming more frequent. Sometimes it won't boot into Vista and instead you need to boot into safe mode before getting back into Vista.

Any ideas on what it could be? Whether hardware or software related.
Have defragged and checked the HD, all updates are on and when it works it's fine. Just the occassional boot up in which you sometimes have to power cycle a few times and go through safe mode before booting properly.

Perhaps hard drive needs to be reseated?

 

[Prime]

A whole host of them.
There one 4 port hub which has a mouse, keyboard, external harddrive (switched off). There's also a printer which is usually powered off as well.
Also have an external monitor plugged in for extra.

The notebook is used as a base station most of the time and mains powered, though the battery is attached as well. Seems rather temperamental at times.

 

[Prime]

Have had to resort to that method at times but it seems a little odd that this is happening now when previously it did not, talking about a 1 year period with not many problems, been fairly recent. Will take a look at the bios though in any case to see what order it's in though i'm fairly certain it's either disable or is indeed set after the hard drive.

When the problem happens it's either a black screen so the power button has to be cycled, or it takes you direct to the option to select safe mode, safe mode with networking etc.

Is there any particular reason having the usb devices would stop the laptop from booting?

Thanks