I'm having two annoying problems with Slackware 9.1

1.I have just installed a USB printer (HP LaserJet 1150) and if the printer is turned on while Slackware is starting, the computer freezes at the detection of USB ports. If I leave the printer off and then turn it on once the OS has loaded, it works fine and I'm also able to print to it.
2.When starting Gnome, it freezes when loading Nautilus. It just stops and then nothing happens. KDE works fine.

I've actually tried wiping out the Linux partitions and re-installing the OS, but I still have the same problems.

This is starting to feel like Win95

Sounds like a usb conflict. Cause I remember working for this company and they came out with a usb product. And some people would have trouble like it kept rebooting if it was XP because of the auto reboot feature if there was something bad, or it would freeze the computer and so you would have to reboot, but it keeps rebooting because of the scenario before.

Basically, there are 2 type of usb interfaces UHCI and OHCI (i think it was those, but i don't remember). If you check in Windows, go to System properties then hardware then device manager, then go to the one that says Universal Serial Bus Controllers, it'll say if the USB ports on the compuer are UHCI (universal host controller) or OHCI (open host controller). But on linux, I don't know how to detect it.

The product was UHCI and the computer had OHCI (or the other way around) and the solution was to get a USB pci card that was the same as the product and that would solve the problem.

--edit--
Or if you have multiple USB slots, plug it into a different locations cause maybe it'll have a different interface.