HP Pavilion g7-1101sa Notebook PC (LS540EA) External USB Drive Installation

[Pirate777]

I have 3 laptops.  1x Win XP 2x Win 7.  The Seagate 500Gb Barracuda external USB drive is recognised and installed correctly on my Dell (XP) and Acer (Win 7) but will not install correctly on my new HP g7.  It's shows on the list of drives as Drive G, but as an internal drive.!  When connected by USB, Windows 7 doesn't locate or load the driver for it.  I cannot access the data on the drive when it's connected to the HP g7 laptop, though I can write to it and the HP g7 will back-up to it.

I've tried multiple methods of installation, but cannot get Win 7 to correctly install the external USB drive.  I've checked the Seagate site and I have all the latest firmware etc and no separate driver is required to install this external drive, so I'm at a loss as to how it's operating on the other two laptops (Dell Vostro 1500 and Acer 5600) but not the new HP Pavilion g7.

The HP g7 is only a few weeks old and under warranty, so I will contact HP (UK) if necessary and see if they can offer a solution unless some bright spark on this forum can offer any help first.

TIA.

Mark

[Pirate777]

Oh, and I also want to install the Thunderbird email client, but it says it's already running, but it's not installed!

I forgot to mention this in my opening message.  Does anyone have any possible solutions I could try please?