Hi JohnO,

Did you install any new applications or add any other hardware besides
the external hard drive? If not, you may want to consider this freeze
motherboard-battery-related.

It may sound very strange but I had many of the symptoms your system is
showing and a new motherboard battery took care of everything -- It's
at least a shot. Also, I was not having any system time issues that
would normally clue me to such a thing.

I've found that some systems can run forever (although the timing will
be off) with a bad mb battery and other systems completely freeze when
the battery starts to barely falter.

As far as your hard drive is concerned, what make and model is it? We
probaby can figure out the problem with that one relatively easy since
XP can support anything that's made these days. There might be some
kind of weird trick to it. :-)

Regards,

Harlin Seritt