[CentOS] flash drive crashes machine

I just installed 5.3 on a tower box. When I plug in a usb flash drive, 
the machine crashes. I don't know how to diagnose the problem; I used 
gnome-system-log, and got this (watching it as I plugged it in):

Apr 12 16:43:25 ga7zx kernel: usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using 
uhci_hcd and address 2
Apr 12 16:43:25 ga7zx kernel: usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Apr 12 16:43:27 ga7zx kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...

As this point, the whole system becomes an ice cube - I can't even 
3-finger salute to reboot. This happened a few times - same result.

The board is a Gigabyte with an AMD Athlon 1.3 GHz cpu. Be aware that 
this drive works fine on 3 other boxes (with 5.3, Fedora 7, and Fedora 8).

What could be wrong? What else should I check? How do I fix it?