OK... I’m a computer guy and I usually free-load on sites like this, but I feel like I can contribute this time.
I followed the advice about plugging the hard drive into a different computer. You know, this can be more or less difficult depending on the 2 computers’ configurations. There are a lot of tricks just to that procedure alone.
After plugging the hard drive in, YOU HAVE TO FIX THE PROBLEM THAT MADE THE FOUND NEW HARDWARE WIZARD COME UP!!!!!!
The found new hardware wizard should not come up when installing a standard mouse or keyboard. Usually this is caused by a cryptographic problem where the driver signing is all screwed up. Dial-a-fix can repair this problem on XP; if you’re on Vista I don’t know exactly what to tell you but this is a page from Microsoft discussing the general problem: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822798
Here’s dial-a-fix: http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Dial-a-fix-Download-27328.html
Once you run dial-a-fix and no longer get the Found New Hardware Wizard for every little piece of hardware (try connecting a different mouse or something), you should be able to put the drive back in the computer it came from, and boot it up.
You’re not done yet!! Now you need to clean up the device manager! To make the device manager really show you all the hidden devices, open a command prompt and type:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
start devmgmt.msc
Then when the device manager opens, go to view > show hidden devices.
Remove anything with a yellow splat, or anything under USB that says Unknown Device.
GOOD LUCK JIM! If you found this page, you probably really needed the help!