Found new hardware wizard causes crash...?

Cpu is win xp sp2. Every time I plug in a usb flash drive, the cpu cuts off and restarts. It will continue to loop until I go to last known good config.
Same happens when I plug a usb printer in - but it only crashes if I go to automatic on the found new hardware wizard. If I specify the location, it installs fine. Earlier the promise raid controller was not properly installed. Got the same crash until I specified the location. Any ideas? This is for a friends cpu.

Error code in event viewer: 0x1000000a (0x1a600010, 0x00000002, 0)0000000, 0x804e8461)

 

sounds to me like a driver issue.

im not really that good at this kind of stuff, but try installing windows xp service pack 3, and see if that fixes your problem.

BUT before you do that, do you by chance have Comodo Firewall installed? that might be causing the issue. if you have it installed, try disabling it and plugging in a usb device.

 

No komodo firewall. Is there some kind of driver database that windows pulls from when running the wizard runs? Is it possible for it to become corrupted? When running in debugging mode, everything works fine

 

sounds like a driver issue. try uninstalling your current video drivers, and installing the newest ones. do you have a nvidia or ATI video card, or no video card at all?

 

Seen this? http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=244617&sd=RMVP
It explains how to use the driver verifier included in XP.

One of the causes for an 0A stop error is incompatible driver.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314063&sd=RMVP

 

He does have an ATI-All-In-Wonder 9800. And one of the objects (ati T200) does have a device can't start error on some restarts. I did try the verifier, but from what I can tell, the error codes appear in a BSOD, right? The cpu won't bsod - it cuts directly to POST.