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How old is your pc? Check the speed of your USB port it shoul be 2.0 if the drive is plugged in to a 1.0 port this could cause the problem.
Aaron, if you reinstalled the OS and eveyything went ok then that is not the issue. You said previously that you could still use the drive on another pc right? Well this has happened to me and I realized the drive was bad. It too would be seen by a laptop but eventually the laptop would not recoginize it anymore either.
Plug it in to your laptop and save any files that are on it to another drive, as I believe it's going bad. Wish I could be more helpful.
Assuming that the drive works, the cable's fine, there's no USB 1.0 vs 2.0 compatibility issues, and the USB port is working, try the answer from diggdougg (that's me):
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=609448
Hard drives, USB device not recognzed, Windows XP
When I plug my external hard drive into the USB, it does absolutely nothing. It doesn't recognize that a device has been connected at all. I know it's not a problem with the hard drive itself, because it works just fine when I plug it into my laptop, and I know it's not a problem with the USB port because my thumb drive works in the same port. If it's a normal driver issue, shouldn't it still recognize that a device has been connected, even if it can't use it properly? I'm on Windows XP SP2, by the way. Any suggestions on what to do would be most appreciated. 
