I have mandrake 10.1 on myhome PC which is set up as a dual boot sytem with winxp. One unheard of thing happened yesterday. Here is the detailed story-
I booted into winxp and loaded some files onto my USB stick and was also simultaneously playing some music CD. I needed to transfer those files on USB stick into my linux so I turn off the music and remove the CD ad USB but the speaker remains on. the restart and boot into linux and then try mounting the pendrive but it isnt recognized as linux hasnt detected it. But just two days back it had successfully recognized the USB drive (it showed it in hard drake and also had updated the fstab file with a new device entry /dev/sdb1). But this time no detection and no such entry.

Now just to test I put in the audio CD and unfailingly the kscd pops up and also lists the tracks but when I click play no sound come out of the speaker just the track progresses. I remove the CD and then quit and choose restart in KDE but while shutting down linux HUNG at the point "shutting/closing down ALSA" with no further response. I had to press reset button of the cpu. This behavior repeated again after I restarted in linux and tried the steps as done above.

any help on this behaviour ??
The only thing that was diffrent from previous proper linux behavior was that the speakers were on while booting linux.
I think the audio(integrated) is configured properly as the speaker played a tune while booting up linux.

I always boot with my speakers on, that should not be a problem. It sounds very strange, though. Have you checked your syslogs for any errors?

Linux is just an OS and yes, it hangs sometimes. Why are you so surprised??

It sounds like a hotplug related issue. Sometimes when you try to access a USB Mass Storage Device, it can hang the system, particularly with older distros, but even some modern ones. The problem comes from the fact that the X system (the graphical system) ends up being the conduit for USB support due to USB mice and keyboards (joysticks too I believe).

I have issues with the SanDisk Mini Cruzer 128. It seems this particular stick is an issue with some distros. Sometimes it works, sometimes not...

It works perfectly with Suse 9.2.