Cannot get new Vista comp to recognize Xp hard drive

Well, I am almost ready to give up...Old XP comp. died and I bought new comp. with Vista. Want to get info off of old drive via external hard drive. Old drive has OS on it...when turned on, it shows as disk 5. Also shows up up top with no drive letter(and I can't assign it one) Disk shows as healthy and with volume. I have talked to several IT people and everyone has diff answer that doesn't work.....I would have to guess this would be a common prob THX

 

Have you been to 'Disk Management' (or is that where you went to assign letter) ?? and is it showing their ? Have you the XP instalation disc ? It must be a Full XP not a recovery or OEM ?? if so it maybe possible for you to set boot order for USB and do a 'XP Repair' also unhitch your Vista Drive before you attempt this. If the Repair is successful you could then connect/slave your Vista drive and copy data over. I know this is achievable with an Internal drive but not to sure about an external one maybe someone else could help with that.