Tony, this sounds exactly like the issue I'm having with USB on WinXP Professional. Very consistent symptoms. (I also use Ethernet - no contest, even if USB was working!)

One thing to note is the detection and installation of USB devices is slightly different than under Win2K and earlier. This may (or may not) have something to do with it. I also recall a big warning about the driver not being "XP Certified" (read: "the right bits aren't twiddled in the resource file" - heh-heh). I've also heard of OTHER USB drivers no longer working in XP (not just this one).

I'm willing to help out here if anyone can send me a debug version of emplode. I'll generate some log files for ya or something ...