Please help me!
I have a Sony Vaio laptop, I`ts about 18 months old. Recently it wont let me install anything external. I first tried with a Belkin wireless broadband reciever card. I went through the instructions as per the installation disc but at the end instead of the little icon appearing in the bottom right hand corner of my screen on the bar it just appeared briefly then disappeared. If I clicked on the desktop icon the same thing happened. The power light on the actual card also failed to illuminate. I looked in Device manager which recognised the card but I couldn`t get it to work. A couple of weeks later I tried to connect my new iriver mp3 player. I have windows media player 10 which is the requirement, but again my computer wouldn`t let me use it. The icon flashes up quickly in the bottom right hand corner but then dissapears quickly, and wjen I go to Sync in media player it says no devices found. Again I looked in device manager in which was listed the mp3 player, and when I clicked on it it said it was working properly! I tried the usb port with a joypad I have had installed for ages and it worked fine so the usb connector is ok(I think!!). I would be extremely grateful if you can help me.
Many thanks for your time
Kev

to BC kevinr999,

That's a strange problem which I don't have a quick fix for. What anti-virus and anti-spyware progs are you running on this machine? Do you have a lot of software automatically starting on this laptop? (look in Start>>run and type msconfig)

Is your Anti-virus program current and updated? If not you can download a free anti-virus program here (US Link): AVG Free
When you have downloaded and installed it you need to go online to register it and update it. (It will probably prompt you to do this.)
Once you have installed AVG uninstall your old Anti-Virus software because you should only have one running on your system.

Do you have a range of anti-spyware installed? If not download and update all of the following:

• Ad-Aware SE from http://www.lavasoft.de/
  There is a tutorial on how to run this here: Ad-Aware Tutorial
  
  
• Spybot Search & Destroy from http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download
  There is a tutorial on how to run this here: SpyBot S&D Tutorial
  
  
• SpywareBlaster from http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
  There is a tutorial on how to run this here: SpywareBlaster Tutorial
  
  
• Ewido Anti-Malware complements anti-virus software by specializing in detecting Trojans, Dialers and Spyware and lots of other stuff. It is free for private use.
  Download it from here: Ewido download
  When installing it untick 'Install Background Guard' and 'Install Scan via Context Menu'.

Reboot your computer in Safe Mode and run the anti-virus scan and all the anti-spyware scans there.
If you are not sure how to boot in Safe Mode there is a tutorial here: Safe Mode




Repeat the problem(s) and then check the Event viewer for more information on what has happened. Here is a guide on using the event viewer (I'm assuming you have Windows XP?):
Event viewer Guide