Hi, any idea what factors can cause this to start happening, and only sometimes? I do have necutray.exe, the USB watching app, enabled at startup. In case it helps, the following were all done within a week of each other (had no choice): 1. Remove a few apps (properly. Then tidied up registry after them, also properly, I think). 2. Install Peachtree Accounting program. 3. Install USB drivers for a data cable to allow a cell phone to be used as a modem (then uninstall and tidy up after the USB CDMA modem drivers part of that, as it turned out they were for XP only). 4. Try to push the broken USB connector of the cable back together and see if it would still work (it didn't). And, 5. plug in a Belkin USB hub that caused a serious crash as soon as the first device was plugged into it. (It hadn't required any additional drivers or I hadn't really checked or installed any, I should say. It required Pentium and the laptop is Celeron, but sales guy said it wouldn't matter...) But by then I think this symptom of the laptop crashing at times when I remove the flash drive had already started. When it crashes, sometimes it can't boot into Windows and I get stuck at the DOS start menu. I have successfully been using a tip to choose command prompt only, then cut the power off right away (THANKS Derek, if you're out there. You gave me that one in relation to another issue awhile back. :). Appreciate any ideas greatly... My parents are supposed to borrow the laptop for an RV trip soon and I have only days to get it working right.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q240075/

Thanks street, I poked around the links there and didn't see any that describe my symptoms or that I also have the specified "parts"/criteria to meet... That I could tell anyway... And I also just noticed that in Device Manager, the USB devices I have added myself over time now seem to have disappeared... Not just yellow or red but gone... Bad timing posting for help over a holiday, shoot...

...another thing in case anyone happens by... After the external USB hub caused the major crash mentioned, one of the things I tried was going into safe mode (one of the only choices I had) and removing any files that had been created/modified at the time of the crash. (It didn't help, but maybe I didn't get them all.) I renamed and moved (rather than delete) the following. Was that a good idea: layout.pnf, layout1.pnf, layout2.pnf, usb.pnf. There was also drvdata.bin and drvidx.bin but I put those back later. As I aimlessly Google search I see that maybe, if it was good to remove the above, I also should have removed the corresponding .inf files for them all. I did not, as the dates/times on them didn't correspond to the crash, but are like 1999. Should I? This may have nothing to do with anything, and the crash-upon-flash removal had happened before this anyway, only is worse now. Just thought I'd mention it in case it matters.

It just sounds to me like you are headed for the fresh install of windows- 98se.Backup any important files you can.If you do a fresh install go to Toshiba support site and make sure you have all your drivers ready.Like sound, video ect...If you have original software that may not be a problem but,better safe than sorry.

Yeah you're probably right street, tho sounds like 98se can be spotty with USB devices/support and maybe I was adding too many of them and their drivers for it to deal with. But a reinstall would probably be a good idea. Would rather try repair type of course but hear that has 50/50 success rate and can make things worse. So you think the manufacturer would have drivers available at the site still huh, is a circa 2001 machine. Or maybe you mean, see user guide there to get manufacturer names, then go to their sites. (Never did a clean install before.) Don't have an OS disk, so maybe best of all would be to see if I could get an OEM restore/recovery CD on eBay or something...? Do those cleanly install the OS as well as drivers for a particular model? Thanks!

Don't have an OS disk, so maybe best of all would be to see if I could get an OEM restore/recovery CD on eBay or something...? Do those cleanly install the OS as well as drivers for a particular model? Thanks! If you got an original OEM install disk that matched you model usually.Do you have system restore on your computer?That would be nice!