On my home machine (XP pro), for some reason my card reader, for my digital camera is not initially being recognized by the computer. When I go to plug it in (USB) with the card in the card reader, the blue screen "Beginning physical memory dump yadda yadda" come up. Hard restart everything is fine try to plug the reader back in crashes again.

Ok so plug reader back in without the card in it. No crash, place the card in card reader, computer asks if I want to format the disk because it is unformated. Seems very strange since I have been using this card for a few years (and card reader for that matter) with zero problems.

Other issue, due to needing to get pictures up online asap, I ran out last night and dropped $30 on a USB cable (with the thinking that if the reader went bad, then a cable would work fine. Downloaded and installed correctly (according to the computer) the drivers for the camera. Not a single image program will recognize the camera, and trying to force regoniztion does not work either. Once the camera is plugged in, the computer pops up the little window in the bottom right showing new hardware is attached, and even knows the model number of the camera etc.

This is very strange, anyone had this issue before? Nick mentioned about the possibility of the card reader dieing, but for the computer to not let me attach the camera via USB to upload is odd.

are the USB drivers ok? Maybe try uninstalling them and reinstalling them.

I really cant think of a reason that the computer would crash because of USB to the point you have to do a hard restart unless you have some sort of virus or perhaps damaged motherboard. Does the computer have more than one USB port? If so does it do the same thing on all USB ports?

I'd start with changing USB ports, then the USB drivers, along with a virus scan. Also try another card. Perhaps the card got damaged over the years.

Sounds like corrupted USB drivers as well. Do other USB items work okay? I have also seen similar failures when using a device that pulled too much voltage off a USB plug, the cure for that was a powered hub.

There are multiple USB items. Tablet, mouse, scanner, webcam, iPod, keyboard. I tried different ports, but no luck. I downloaded the XP driver reset software. Did not do a damn thing. As for fixing the driver for the card reader, which route would be the best one?

That is a lotta USB items running at once. Like sean said, too much power comming off of measly USB votage. Have you tried swapping some of that over to a powered hub?

They are never all connected at once, not enough ports. Did come to find out from Olympus that they do not have it working for XP yet. So I just burned $30 on a cable for no damn reason and still cannot upload pictures.

chitfudge... That's piss poor on their part.

I've run into this problem before ... One of the Windows services was corrupted ... After a repair using the Windows XP disc, everything worked fine ...

I recommend you back up all your important data to disc before repairing, of course ...