O/T: Laptop freezes after inserting flash drive?

I"m looking at an older laptop for a friend. It"s an HP Omnibook 6000. I had some memory lying around and already put the max of 512 mb in it. OS is XP Pro SP2.

Now for the problem: the plastic support tab in the USB port on the back is broken off(also made sure the contacts weren"t touching). So I bought a PCMCIA 2-port USB card for her. Easy, right? Inserting the card is fine; inserting the flash drive into the card is fine. But when you open the drive to view the contents, the light flashes very rapidly(like it"s transferring data) and the pc locks up. Can"t do anything. Pull the flash drive out and the pc is still locked up, have to do a hard shutdown with the power button.

I"ve tried this with the PCMCIA card driver installed, without the PCMCIA card driver installed and letting Windows do the work, same results either way.

Plug n Play service is set to auto and is running. Nothing in Event Viewer about this problem.

I tested the PCMCIA card and flash drive combo on my laptop, works fine, don"t have to install PCMCIA card driver, Windows handles it nicely.

I"m kinda lost on this one. She used to use this pc for a karaoke setup and did tell me that she "removed as much as possible so it would be faster." I"m wondering if maybe I just have to reinstall Windows? Or is there something else I"m missing?

Opinions and suggestions are appreciated, and thank you for your time.

Anthony

Are you sure your memory chips are compatable or not damaged, seated firmly along with being correctly matched SDRAM?

Here is a link to the specs....
http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/omnibook/specs.pdf

Maybe a USB 1.0 vs 2.0 issue? Just guessing.

Can you plug anything else into the USB port? Maybe try a camera or another thumbdrive.

HPs handling of the PCMCIA card slots is far from great. I have had two HP laptops with card issues. Not that model, but blue screen of death serious. I would try to put a jump drive splitter into the USB hole. it might take a shim to make it fit and contact, and be only good for that computer. Jim