USB Problems

Whelp, my friend has problems again.

Her computer specs:

3 Year Old Dell
Windows XP SP 1 or 2 (not sure which)
256 Ram at least
some sort of removable zip drive and DVD/CD burner combo drive.

Here is the back story.

My friend had not backed up her computer for three years. Despite my repeated warnings of BACKING UP YOUR DATA TO AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE, she didn't listen until it was [almost] too late. Basically WIndows crashed hard.

As it were though, I found a site online that let me load Windows up just enough to let her get an external hard drive (I believe it is a Western Digital, 40 G, but uses an external enclosure) and a memory stick. Why the memory stick? Well, Windows always complained about power problems/power surges during this time with the external hard drive. So we backed up her data the long way...put it on a mem stick, copy it over to another copy that had the external hard drive connected to it, delete the data on mem stick and repeat process until completition.

She then formatted and reinstalled Windows XP clean. She stated she had no problem with her mem stick or external hard drive being recognized...until recently.

Now, (according to her), for some reason, the error has returned (her hard drive is exceeding it's power limits). She mentioned that it also asked for new drivers...both for her external hard drive AND her memory stick.

Any ideas on this? I can understand there being a problem before and after windows was deleted and reinstalled. However, it doesn't make sense that it worked for a while, and then suddenly, boom, there's the error again.

Note I have suggested the following:
restart windows
make sure nothing else is plugged into any other USB ports and her computer is plugged in
making sure there aren't too many programs running at the same time

She has stated that supposedly, now it sees the hard drive, but acts as if it's new hardware. It also mentions a power surge on the hub port (her words, not mine).

This type of external hard drive is one with a cable that one is for data, the other power. However, it has (seemingly) only needed one. I thought about having her put both in, but when I hear the words, 'power surge', I get a little concerned in case something is going awy with the USB ports (namely, the hard drive getting too much power and being fried).

Any ideas on this?

Jam it back in, in the dark.