We had a similar problem on one of ours but not the same message you got. On ours, it detected the device but said it could not configure it (although the drivers were properly loaded). In our case, it was a USB-1 vs USB-2 issue. Although I had performed all XP updates and it was at SP-2, for some reason the USB drivers were 1.1. I had to go into the system settings and delete all USB devices, shut down and restart, and they were redetected and properly configured as USB-2. Our problem went away. Now, it's possible that your MB does not feature USB-2. In this case, it won't work well with external hard drives. It would be pathetically slow. You could check for a BIOS update from Dell but I'm not sure such would fix a USB issue. It's worth a shot. Good luck.
To Whom It May Concern,
Can someone please help me? I have an old computer and Plug-n-Play does not seem to be working anymore on my desktop for my external hard drive. I do not know too much about computers but according to the receipt I have a Dell computer with the following:
XP Home Edition (service pack 2)
Dimension DIM 4300S
pentium 4 1.6GHz
512 MB of RAM.
When I plug the USB external hard drive, I do not receive the message ?Found new Hardware? and I can?t see the drive in Explorer. After using my digital camera the drive shows up, which in my case is F:\. The other problem when I select the F:\ I get a ?Please insert a disk into F:\? message. I do not have this problem when I use the external USB hard drive on my laptop. The external hard drive is Iomega is HDD 80GB.
Thank you very much for your help
Karen

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