USB external hard drive problem

[Hodsocks]

I have a WD passport external drive for backing up the pc.s at work, it works fine on all machines apart from one, this one either doesn't recognise it or recognises it for a few seconds and then disappears of the system.
ALL computers are running Win XP SP2.
I uninstalled and reinstalled the USB drivers to no avail, thinking it might be a mobo/usb problem I installed a pci usb2 card, this doesn't recognise it at all, which suprised me as I expected this to have cured the problem.
I have checked out other threads on here and somesuggestions I will try but has anyone any other suggestions as to what the problem might be?

 

[papsolo]

How To Create External Bootable Usb Disk

 

[NetCablesPlus]

This is a longshot, but are you using a different USB cable on the problem PC and could it be the cause of your problem?

 

[Hodsocks]

Nope, using the same cable for all 3 machines I'm afraid.