Reinstalling windows problems? Help!!

Alright I know this isn't the most exciting, but I'm a total noob and I've tried everything and I really could really use some help, so bear with me k?

Dell inspiron E1505. It has been freezing more and more over the past year, so I took it to geek squad. They pulled up event viewer showing pages and pages of errors. They recomended I reinstall windows. So, I decided to just do it myself.

I downloaded everything onto my Seagate free agent pro external hard drive. Then I looked and looked for some sort of reinstall CD I assumed would have come with the computer, only to find something from dell saying they didn't send me one. So, I did an online chat with some nice lady at Dell who told me how to do the whole norton pc restore thing that would take it back to factory settings. That worked just fine. So, after booting my computer I connect my seagate - the computer recognizes it, the hard drive installs it's software, tells me to reboot my computer- k reboot - seagate has me enter the product key then reboot computer - k reboot, but this time when it booted, it didn't recognise that there was anything plugged in at all. I tried seemingly every combination of firewire or usb ports. I rebooted my computer and seagate and even gave it about 30 min of just sitting there connected to see if it would recognise it. NOTHING.

So, I finally decided to just re-reinstall windows. I disconnected the seagate, reinstalled windows, and it still wouldn't recognise it. I did another chat thing with dell who had me check that all my computer drivers are working properly (they are) and concluded that it was my seagate. I just don't see how it could work fine and then just stop three minutes later without some sort of trauma! I'll call seagate in the morning when they open, but I'm just wondering if some of you wonderful smart people have any ideas as to what is wrong or what I'm doing wrong. I've just been trying to get this stupid thing to connect for so many hours and I'm really frustrated Any ideas are reallllyyy appreciated. Thank you!!!

 

Does it work on another computer?

 

Yes try your USB HDD in another computer.

Did you try another USB device in your dell laptop such as USB key?

 

You may not have downloaded the proper usb drivers.
During the installation, Windows will use whatever driver it can source to make something work, so after your cloning, the usb drivers may not have stuck.

I hope you realize, that when you go to the Dell website you can type in your service tag number and you can download all of the drivers their.

I have an E1505 too, but never had these problems.

K-TRON