Two problems I keep having with my laptop.

One, it's often slow to respond when I'm viewing a folder in Windows Explorer and I click or use the arrow keys to highlight a folder. Sometimes it can take up to a minute to respond, though being that slow doesn't happen more than once a day. The often slow to respond has been happening for some time and the sometimes taking up to a minute to respond only started happening in the last few days.

The second problem takes a more complicated description. I don't know whether or not the two problems are related somehow.

For some time now, once in awhile when I remove an SD card from the SD card slot, any Windows Explorer windows that were open to the external hard drive will close as if the external hard drive was also unplugged and a few seconds later, I'll get that "autoplay" popup as if the external hard drive was plugged in with my laptop already on and booted up.

Twice last Thursday morning, and twice again tonight, it suddenly stopped seeing my usb connected external hard drive. When this happens I get an error message popping up from the lower right of my screen saying "external device has malfunctioned and windows does not recognize it."

At the same time, at a steady rate of about once a second, the indicator light on the external hard drive rapidly flashes 3 times and I hear a faint "tick" from the external hard drive.

While this is happening, if I attempt to go to any folder on the external hard drive in Windows Explorer, I get told that said folder doesn't exist.

Also at the same time that my laptop suddenly stops seeing my external hard drive, my also usb connected mouse goes dead for a few seconds as if unplugged (the light in it isn't even on) before it starts working again. It is plugged into the same USB port as my keyboard through a usb hub, but the keyboard lights stay on and it keeps working just fine.

There is a dual usb port on one side of my laptop like what many laptops have. My external hard drive is plugged into one port and the usb hub is plugged into the other.

The problem involving when I unplug my SD card makes me suspect that the not seeing my external hard drive problem is with my laptop and not the ExtHD itself

When I plug the ExtHD into another laptop, it works just fine. When I unplug it from my laptop for a minuite or so and plug it back in, it works just fine.

The "twice last Thursday morning" is what prompted my previous post asking about what backup program I should use as I had not backed the ExtHD up for at least a couple months. I was using my laptop's main HD to backup the external HD, now I have moved everything to my laptop's main HD and I use the ExtHD for backup.

So, given all that, what could be causing the slow to respond and not seeing the ExtHD problems? How can they be fixed? Since my laptop is over 4 years old and I can get a new one for about $600 from hpshopping.com (where I got my present laptop) I'm not willing to put it in the shop to fix those problems, but if it's something I can fix myself, I'll do that.

Here's what I'll probably go for if I do replace my laptop, a HP G72T

Or I may go for this instead