Reading old 2.5 Laptop HD....HELP!!

[ronianna]

Hi
My old laptop died, but the HD was fine so I recovered it before I threw away the rest. I've now bought a powered enclosure that enables me to plug it into any USB port and access the data on it and use it as an additional memory storage source.
The problem is that when I plug it in to any USB port it immediately causes the host PC to crash. I assume that this is because it tries to run through it's start up proceedure from it's past life (XP on boot up etc).

So I need to know how I can 'explore' the old HD to delete the OS and then just use it like any other mass storage device.

Please help....I'm scared of damaging my new laptop by trying.
Thanks

[stevie21]

I wouldn't have though that your external HD is trying to boot XP - must be another problem.
It's not likely you'll be able to but if you tried another laptop HD in there you might be able to narrow down what is wrong.
I can't help more but I'm relatively certain it's not the old OS trying to load.

[RATTER14]

It may be a problem trying to access it symply because windows xp firewall on old hard drive will think its being invaded by a foreign pc so will put up its defences.

[rojash]

As stevie21 says, if the machine is already up and running then it won't be trying to boot XP on the external drive. RATTER14's answer doesn't make sense because the presence of firewall software (on the old drive) can have no effect if it's not running - and of course, it's not!

I would guess it's a USB driver problem. What you are trying to do should ceratinly be possible; I've used the same technique a number of times to recover data.