Can a USB Device kill a PC

[fallingrock]

I plugged a USB external hard drive into a friend's Dell portable USB port. His system immediately shut donw and it took some time to get it up and running again. However, both of his USB ports are now disfunctional (neither his USB mouse, no flash USB drive work). I then plugged the same external USB hard drive into my Dell desktop and it immediately went to the blue screen of death: "Your computer has been shut down to prevent damage"...the error events looked like memory addresses. Any ideas about what is going on here? The USB drive has behaved normally for a month, and it may or may not be the culprit. Ever heard of USB ports being rendered unusable? I feel like crap for screwing up my friend's portable and don't trust plugging the external into anything but a wall socket. Clues? Experience? Guesses about this? Is there possibly a USB Driver my freind can use to get his ports functioning again?

 

[eyec]

try going into device manager and check the status of the USB devices.

delete them and then re-install them if the system does not automatically pick them up when you re-boot.

 

[fallingrock]

Delete and reinstall USP Drivers. There was no Yellow Question Mark by any device. If I do as suggested, delete and reinstall drivers, where do I get the drivers to reinstall from?

 

[allteltec]

If you right click device and uninstall and go up the tree to the top computer and right click and click scan for hardware changes XP will find the drivers in your system and reinstall them. Now on problem of the computer shunting down when you plug in the USB HD. I have a note book HD it was from a dell that die in my son's Dell note book PC. I tried plugging it in to a external USB housing to try to fix it. When I plugged in the USB cable the PC shut down. The HD is shorted drawing to much power from the usb port. This should not happen the ports are so post to be current regulative to 500ma. and to disable a device trying to pull more then 500ma. I would try plugging your USB HD. into a powered USB hub, don't plug the hub into the PC until you know the HD spines up and looks and sounds ok.