I recently bought an IOGear 2.5" 80GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive, installed it on my Dell inspiron laptop via one of the four USB ports on the laptop itself. It set up an E, F, G, and H drive automatically and all is fine with that. Works great.

Prior to installing this ext hard drive, I had a Targus Mobile Docking Port Replicator station, Model PA095U, set up through one of the ports on the laptop. I have a wireless mouse and keyboard attached to that, in addition to the printer. That was all unplugged when I installed my ext hard drive.

So, now, when I restart the computer with the docking station attached, I am able to use the mouse (by both wireless and pad), but I cannot type anything (either through the keyboard on the laptop or through the portable keyboard), and when I go to open any file on my desktop, the properties windows pops up for that document. That's it. I cannot open anything on my desktop. I can open programs via the Start button at the bottom, but only if they are on the first pop-up menu--for the buttons that are expandable on the Start navigator, when I click them, the whole Start navigator menu just disappears. Weird!! On the programs I am able to open, when I use the mouse at the drop-down lists, it's giving me a "drag-and-drop" prompt and otherwise won't let me click on anything.

This all happens with or without the ext hard drive attached.

If I unplug that docking station and restart the computer, all works fine. But now I can't use the printer (unless I get an adapter), nor can I use the portable mouse/keyboard otherwise my computer will go funky on me.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the docking station. Didn't help.

Any thoughts?

Wireless mouse and keyboards are notoriously failure prone.
What happens when you use a regular mouse and keyboard? If the problem is in your system, it will be the same with the old style mouse and keyboard. But if it only occurs with the wireless mouse, the mouse has done its thing, and is ready to move on to the happy hunting ground.