My favorite old Dell Computer running Windows XP 32 bit suffered a broken power jack pin, so I could no longer charge the battery. I took the hard drive out and put it in an enclosure so I could connect it to an HP computer running Windows Vista 64 bit. When connected via USB, the Vista computer assigned a new drive letter and I was able to get to my data. This was fine for several days. This morning I tried to connect the Vista computer to the home network as usual, but I kept getting an error message that it could not connect. I turned it off, plugged in the external hard drive, and the computer connected to my home network just fine when I turned it back on. What do I need to do to enable the Vista computer to connect to the home network without the external hard drive being connected? Both computers connected to the home network before the accident with the old Dell. For some reason, something on the Dell hard drive (the external one) must be overriding the Vista computer. I’m at a loss?
