Nexstar IDE to USB, Will Not Show Up (by 2 users)

Laptop hard drive is having problems. Would load into Windows XP do a blue screen then go to a dos prompt. I thought I would take the drive out and put into a external drive to get the information off in case it was going bad. There is no load clicking or grinding noises like I have heard in the past when a drive goes bad.

Bought the NexStar external drive. Hard Drive is a IDE Seagate. First time I connected it to my desktop computer it showed as a USB Mass Storage Device, did like always with other usb external drives. It then got stuck. The new hardware icon at the bottom kept on showing. I then went to My Computer and the drive would not show. Then the computer locked down completely. I then restarted with the usb drive still attached.

This time Windows XP was stalling at the Welcome screen. I unhooked the external usb drive and it went on into Windows. I then again tried to hook up the usb drive. I opened My Computer first. It does like it is searching for the drive but never finds it. I let it sit and the drive never shows. So again I unhooked it. In My Computer windows I: Drive shows quickly and then disappears.

I went and tried to install on my other laptop as a external usb drive. Same thing happened again as I just described. I have tried changing the drive's jumpers and nothing seems to work.

What could be the problem? The drive or the external case?
Thank you