Both External Harddrives make my PC freeze

Hey folks



A while ago I had to format and reinstall my windows (XP 32 bit SP3) and ever since my pc freezes when I plug my external harddrives in.
Both harddrives are clearly working on other computers, so what I know for sure is that the issue lies at my pc.

Samsung Story Station (1TB/USB2.0)
Western Digital My Book (500GB)


What have I tried?

- Googling around for hours
- Re-installing windows (was allready skeptical that it would actually work)
- Tested external harddrives on both mac and windows systems
- Tried diffirent USB ports
- Tried diffirent USB cables


As you can see I sort of ran out of ideas so I would be really helped if someone had any idea of how to solve this.


Thanks in advance

 

Make sure you have the latest chipset drivers. Its possible that the ones you are using now are outdated.

 

If the freeze-up is happening when you start or reboot the PC, unplug the drives, go into the BIOS and check the drive boot order. If the PC is set to boot off an external USB device before it seeks the main internal hard drive, this will happen. If this is the case, move the internal hard drive to the top of the order and the USB drives to the bottom.

Hope this helps.

 

I have looked there, the only options I have is booting trough my ROM-Drive and my pc's harddrive (harddrive first).
With other words, I don't have the option to boot trough USB so i'm afraid it has to be something else.
Any ideas?

 

I downloaded the latest drivers for my chipset (intel i975x) but as soon as I open the .rar file I get some real complicated, manual, advanced stuff I don't know anything about. Theres no exe included, and the readme is everything except clear of how to proceed. :/

 

Try here and run the driver update utility. it should scan your pc and look for any old drivers.

 

Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility (Chipset INF)
Product Detected Intel® 6, 5, 4, 3, 900 Series Chipsets
Current Version Installed 9.2.3.1022
This version is valid.


This is what I get, apparantly it seems up to date.
The thing is, theres lots of documents on these harddrives which I need for college, would hate to see all of these getting lost...

 

I really struggling here. You have done a really good job at analysing the problem and ruling out problems and I cant see much else. Long shot is maybe your PSU is dieing and cant output enough juice to power the drives. Does it only happen when you have both plugged in?

If the drives work on other PCs you dont need to worry about loosing data as you can get it off on another PC.

 

i had the same problem with an asus p4 m/board it has nothiing to do with the drives as the drives allow my new build pc to boot properly
what would happen is as the pc was going through it's bios routine when it came to the attached usb devices it would hang up and never get past that point
i never did find a cure

the only suggestion is either to unplug or switch the drives off while booting and plug back in or switch back on as soon as the operating system starts to load

this is not an os driver issue it is a bios issue maybe a bios update might help but that didn't work in my case

good luck...