I've got a USB flash drive which worked perfectly with Mandrake 9.1.

Now with 9.2, inserting the flash drive crashes the system. It just hangs up. Nothing that I can find in any log files to give any hints. The whole laptop freezes, including mouse pointer.

I've ruled out a hardware problem : Knoppix works fine with the USB flash drive.

Any ideas?

edited to add Can anyone tell me how I can capture the messages that appear on the screen as the system is booting? I get some useful looking errors that whiz past as I boot up, but I can't find them in any of the /var/log files (this is if I boot with the USB flash pen drive inserted, which also doesn't work).

Oddly, I had a problem on Mandrake 9.1 where the boot-up would sometimes hang whilst checking my built-in firewire adapter. Normally, a reboot fixed it. I thought 9.2 had fixed this but it is happening again : if I put in the flash pen, the next reboot of the PC hangs whilst checking/configuring the firewire adapter. Letting the laptop cool down seems to sort things out.

Tried recompiling the kernel and checking that all the USB modules are included. Kernel recompile worked fine but hasn't fixed the problem.

You can type dmesg as root in a console to see if there are any obvious errors.

I have got something from dmesg. Unfortunately, I can't capture the actual error as inserting the flash pen kills the laptop and it won't boot if I boot with it already in.

I have got some standard USB setup messages though - it all looks OK to me but maybe someone else can spot a problem.

usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.275 $ time 12:42:04 Sep 18 2003
usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode enabled
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0x1200, IRQ 11
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0x1300, IRQ 10
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb-uhci.c: v1.275:USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
ehci_hcd 00:10.3: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0
ehci_hcd 00:10.3: irq 10, pci mem cea86000
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
ehci_hcd 00:10.3: USB 2.0 enabled, EHCI 1.00, driver 2003-Jun-19/2.4
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 4 ports detected


I also notice that in Hardrake, it lists the USB bits and pieces, but for some gives "module unknown". The items that give this are VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 & USB UHCI Root Hub. Since the flash pen is USB 2.0, I wonder if I only have a driver for USB 1 and it is trying to run at USB 2 and that screws things up?