usb stick hangs debian

[Vijaya S <vijaya@picopeta.com>]

hi all,
Whenever i connect a USB flash stick to my debian sarge machine it hangs
and i have to reset the machine..
why does this happen any ideas pls?

its an AMD Athlon(TM) XP 2400+
processor speed  2004.568

512Mb ram
 /sbin/lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
apm                     9116   2 (autoclean)
usb-storage            97120   0 (unused)
i810_audio             21248   0
soundcore               3204   2 [i810_audio]
ac97                    2864   0 (unused)
ac97_codec              9568   0 [i810_audio]
eepro100               17232   1
keybdev                 1664   0 (unused)
usbkbd                  2848   0 (unused)
input                   3040   0 [keybdev usbkbd]
usb-ohci               17472   0 (unused)
usbcore                48000   1 [usb-storage usbkbd usb-ohci]
the above modules r installed

The machine totally freezes and i have to hard boot everytime:(
REgards,
Vijaya