Attempting Boot From Hard Drive Stalls Windows 10 64Bit

My workstation BIOS only has the option to boot from CD or Hard Disk.
SSD fitted. Got this boot problem.
Cloned the SSD and replaced it. Same problem intermittently.
If I go into setup and alter something and reboot and play around an put back what I altered the thing seems to boot after 2 or 3 attempts.
I sometimes leave it on Sleep in case my next boot up fails.

Not sure if it helps but disconnecting the external USB drives seems to be part of the mix.

How can I post a screen shot of AOMEI partition assistant.

Previous post from Scott that was never resolved.
I get the following message on boot up:

attempting boot from cd rom

attempting boot from hard drive

It will not move off that screen. I hard shut down and tried 3 more times and the same issue. It only happens on a cold boot. Here is the intersting part that I recently found out. If I unplug the USB connection to the first external hard drive it will then proceed and boot up. This is very bizarre and more of an annoyance if anything, but quite perplexing and would luv to hear thougths on this?

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Scott