XP Pro: Laptop vs Desktop

I have a question for any techie that really knows Windows well.

I have a P4 2.4 Dell laptop with XP Pro installed, all the latest updates, and 768 MB of RAM.

At my office, I have a Dell Dimension P4 1.6 with XP Pro and all the latest updates, and 1 GB of RAM.

Now, the problem. I have a notebook HDD that is in a portable USB 2.0 case that I can take to and from my office on which I keep my work. On my office machine, when I plug it in, Windows fully recognizes the drive, and it can be accessed from any application.

On my laptop, the disk is just partially recognized. Explorer sees it, but my 3rd party file manager doesn't (this exact same version of the file manager does recognize the drive at my office)...or rather, it does see the drive, but is unable to open it, and instead, launches Explorer to open the drive. Even after a reboot, the file manager isn't able to open the drive.

Any idea if this is a Windows setting that I am missing somewhere. Since the version & build # of the file manager are the same, if the problem were the file manager, it should not work on my office machine either.

--
Harald
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