Dallas, I will have to follow Scott advice and run cmd.exe. per instructions of copy and paste. John mentioned it could be the power supply and I may be using the wrong transformer. In any case if I cannot access the XP or Vista OS I cannot format the portable hard drive. Also, I like to retrieve the data to double layer DVD which I cannot do since the portable hard drive cannot be accessed. I do not think the USB slots are corrupted because other devices seem to work on them. I have to check on what I have connected and what works. I am glad that you had success. I do not intend to ruin two PCs OS for a unit that can be replaced for $100 USA dollars. Gerald --- On Thu, 7/17/08, PcCowboy <saddle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: From: PcCowboy <saddle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [pchelpers] Re: USB Portable Hardrive - PC does not start To: pchelpers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date: Thursday, July 17, 2008, 2:04 PM Gerald Gollinger wrote: > Scott and Cowboy > > The problem is when I plug in the USB cable to my PC or notebook the OS stalls. If I cannot access the OS what good is the peripheral? On my vista notebook I lost wifi and web access. I already had word processed instructions on how to restore. > --- On Wed, 7/16/08, Gerald Gollinger <gerald3nyc@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I found my problem. Something is wrong with the USB port in front. I plugged the drive in a port in the rear and now the drive shows up. My son has been telling me for a long time that there was something wrong with the front USB ports because some things just didn't work right. This morning I was backing up to my USB backup drive and started getting a "Write delay failure" message. I moved it to the back USB port and it worked just fine. BTW FYI I have one of those tabletop DVD players that has a USB port. I can plug in a USB Thumb drive and play videos (avi, divx) from the thumb drive. But I never could get it to see a USB Hard Drive. Then today I was reading off the net that I needed to format my USB Hard-drive to FAT32. I did and now my Hard-drive works in the USB port. Yea!! no more burning cds and dvds to watch a tv program that I recorded. I just move them to the hard-drive and plug the drive to the USB port and watch them. Dallas -- -------list-services-below----------- Regards, John Durham (list moderator) <http://modecideas.com/contact.html?sig> Freelists login at http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi List archives at http://www.freelists.org/archives/pchelpers PC-HELPERS list subscribe/unsub at http://modecideas.com/discuss.htm?sig Latest news live feeds at http://modecideas.com/indexhomenews.htm?sig Good advice is like good paint- it only works if applied. -- -------list-services-below----------- Regards, John Durham (list moderator) <http://modecideas.com/contact.html?sig> Freelists login at http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi List archives at http://www.freelists.org/archives/pchelpers PC-HELPERS list subscribe/unsub at http://modecideas.com/discuss.htm?sig Latest news live feeds at http://modecideas.com/indexhomenews.htm?sig Good advice is like good paint- it only works if applied.