You've fallen prey to one of the classic blunders.

The most well known is, "Never get involved in a land war in Asia."

But only slightly less well known is, "Never trust Microsoft operating systems when reliability is on the line."



All kidding aside, there are a few suggestions I have:

1. Make sure the Intel USB chipset drivers are up to date for that PC.

2. Make sure the BIOS version is up to date on that PC.

3. Install the driver for that device prior to plugging it in.

1 and 2 can be found at support.dell.com and plugging in the system's service tag number. The third can be found at the web site of the manufacturer of the CD-ROM drive.