IBM T42 SuSE 9.2 - Asphixiation via USB

I've got an IBM Thinkpad T42 2378FVU running SuSE 9.2 Pro. My USB mouse works fine, but when I try to plug in a memory stick, or my iPod, the machine starts immediately to experience something like asphixiation... my KDE desktop environment still responds to mouse and keyboard events, but no new processes will start up. It's like the machine is choking to death. Since new processes won't run, I can't shut the machine down properly - have to resort to holding down the power key.

It just occurs to me that it may be related to the fact that I am running Windows XP under VMware on the machine. I think this happened when VMware wasn't running, but I'll have to go back and check. I also haven't tried just yanking the device out of the USB port.

In the meantime, has anyone else experienced this sort of thing?

Thanks,
Dave

In a console window, as root run this

tail -f /var/log/messages

and then plug it in - you should see what the system is trying to do

I thought I should follow this up by pointing out that since recently upgrading to 9.3 Pro, I no longer have this problem. The iPod and other memory-type USB devices work like a charm.