Our Dell notebook hangs on startup when we have all of our USB devices plugged in (I get a black screen, and I don't think I see the Windows screen/hear the startup tune). We have four USB ports, currently set up like this:
back left - USB hub with four ports (TV tuner, scanner, remote sensor, empty)
back right - keyboard (via an adapter, this is an older PS/2 keyboard but the notebook doesn't have a PS/2 port)
right-hand top - empty
right-hand bottom - printer
Two slots are open for a flash drive and a wireless mouse but these get plugged in after startup. When we try to play around with different configurations, things get worse, with devices not being recognized. Also, the scanner's power light oddly often turns OFF when we plug it in to the USB hub, and ON when we unplug it; when this happens we can't use the scanner and have to shut down and try again.
Don't know if this helps with diagnosis, but this only happened after we moved our set up from one room to another, and probably put all the USB devices in different ports / parts of the hub (due to not remembering how we had it prior).
Called Dell but they were unhelpful, suggesting we should just start-up with all USB devices unplugged, then plug everything in later. This usually does get us into Windows but some USB devices still give us problems / don't work when we do plug them in (like the scanner as noted above) and it's a real hassle and we never had any problems before.
I've got a Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook, running Windows XP Media Center Edition. Let me know if you need more info.
Thanks in advance for any help!
~Doug