DimaYasny 180 Godmode enabled Team Colleague Featured Poster

Flash drive - some generic 512mb thing.
Puter: Dell Lattitude d510
XPsp2pro

On any other computer the drive once plugged in detects and apperas in "my computer". on this laptop what happens is:
the flashdrive's led lights up for a couple of seconds and turns off
in device manager a "usb mass storage device" appears
in "my computer" nothing happens

when I pull out the stick mass storage device disappears from devices.
the usb in the laptop is 100% ok - I've plugged a usb mouse in there.

F1?