Windows 8 Dell xps laptop crashes when attaching a hard drive

Hi all.

as the title says, whenever i connect my samsung 1TB portable Hard drive on a Dell xps 15inch laptop running windows 8 pro, it completely freezes the whole system. i can move the mouse but i cant click anything or go to task manager using ctrl alt del

These are the things i have tried:

tried different cables

tried different usb ports

Removed usb drivers

Checked event logs(the laptop crashes when i launch the event logs)

Ran CCleaner cleaning registry

All the above did not work. i even tried to roll back to a previous restore point and that did not work either.

I tested the hard drive on my brother in law's laptop and it worked fine. it is a acer laptop running fresh copy of windows 7.

Is this a windows 7 error? do i have a virus maybe?(i am going to do a full system scan soon)

What other things can i try?

Thanks in advance

In the past we've had issues with Dell laptops supplying insufficient power via the USB port for a device plugged into it; is there an AC adaptor available for the drive, so you can rule out power problems? We got freezes and crashes.

Nick

its a 2.5 portable drive and it worked fine 4-5 days ago :(

OK, can you try booting the machine with say a Linux live CD and seeing whether the drive works OK under that and whether the machine freezes?

Hi all.

my portable hdd is having some weird issues.

First of all, whenever i connect it to my laptop it will completely freeze my computer.

I could access it fine on other pc's and on my laptops safe mode but never when running under normal mode of windows 8 OS on my actual laptop

i then did a virus check and it found a malware there so i removed it.

Since removing it, i could not access data on it even on safe mode or on other computers.

on "MyComputer" it would display the drive and indicates that data is in it and not empty but when i click on the drive it is blank, no files or folders visible.

i then went into folder explorer properties and unticked the box saying "hide system files and folders" and after that this is what is inside the contents of my hdd.

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/6997/issuekx.png

When i click on the hdd icon i am able to see my data and manipulate it. My question is why is it hidden?

why do i need to navigate twice to access my data ie, E:/ > E:/ hdd icon?

I am going to format my laptop as it cant even read any of my other portable hdd's or access event logs as it crashes the whole system.

i've done two virus scans using two different anti virus apps and laptop and hdd's are clean.