Problems with USB to IDE adapter

I am appealing to minds greater than mine in resolving this issue.

I am working off an HP pavilion ze5500 laptop, Windows XP Home Edition, Version 2002, SP 2, IE 6.0

I have a VANTEC USB to IDE Adapter model CB-IUSB20 that I am trying to use on this computer to read the contents of a Seagate 80 GB laptop harddrive.

I went to the company website (www.vantecusa.com) and downloaded the drivers. I have successfully used this device on my desktop PC but now I am on the road and trying to get this to work.

Previously, I had SP 3 and IE 8.0 installed on this computer. I read some other posts of people having problems with USB devices after installing Service Pack 3 so I uninstalled Service Pack 3, which necessitated uninstalling IE 8.0

What happens when I connect this adapter to my laptop is that it is immediately recognized but after 20 seconds or so I get a message saying there was a problem with my device during installation. This device appears to want to use the USBSTOR.SYS driver and I did verify that it is in the c:\windows\sys32\drivers\ folder

I opened DEVICE MANAGER and I uninstalled everything under Universal Serial Bus Controllers, then rebooted the machine. That was not successful in getting this USB to IDE adapter to work.

I have corresponded with VANTEC tech support and I think they are also stumped. They did suggest that the hard drive I am trying to read has to be set up as the master by removing any pin jumpers. I did that but still no luck.

I do not have another computer than I can try this adapter on, nor do I have any other USB devices that I could try on my HP.

Any suggestions?