[acropolite (Phil)]

I have seen a similar problem on a USB device at work. Sometimes it will read, often not, yet every time a Canon digital camera is plugged in it works perfectly. I suspect our problem is not using the "safely remove hardware" option on the camera and the port remains somehow allocated to the camera. I've also noticed that USB devices sometimes are reluctant to work when plugged in to a port differing from the one they were first installed on.