I'm new to LINUX and trying to use it like windows but without success. I bought a new external hard drive with the software installed for running it but don't know how to load this on my notebook ... so frustrated I'm thinking of loading windows which is easy to use!! Any one able to advise how to load new programs?

Whenever you ask a question help us help you by telling us what distro, version and arch you are running (Centos5.5, 64bit). Specifically how you load programs will depend on this information.

What type of hard drive? USB? If it is USB you really should not need any software to use it.

Trying to run Linux like windows is vitually guarenteed to lead to frustration and failure. Linux is actaully easier to use than windows, but you have to totaly forget anything you learned while running windows. Linux IS different than windows.

You need to plug your external drive in and see if your system recognises it. If so, you will probably see a message box of some kind pop up for you to click on which will then mount your external drive. Since you give us no information about what you are running it's hard to be precise here. As Lazlow pointed out, Linux is not Windows. Many of us are thankful for that fact.
ciao,
jdk

Any software that came in the drive is likely to be Windows stuff and will be useless and unnecessary in Linux.

It is also likely to be unnecessary in Windows; Windows will likely see it just fine without your having to install anything. Persons who make stuff for Windows feel like they have to maintain the mystery by packing stuff with unneeded executables, tray icons, and other superfluous--er--stuff.

I have two external USB drives.

One has Windows software on it. It works just fine under Linux without extra software--the Windows software just lies there; if I delete it, the firmware recreates it. (I left it at default formatting because from time to time I have to plug it into a Windows box.)

The other came NTFS and I reformatted it into two ext3 partitions after verifying that the hardware worked and was visible to Linux. It also works just fine with Linux without any extra software. (I do not expect to ever plug this one into a Windows computer).