USB Crashing computer

Hi,
I'm asking this on behalf of another person so it's not the computer in my specs. Yesterday he bought a USB wireless internet card installed it and all worked good for a day. then last night windows would not load. it would crash at almost exactly the same stage when the XP logo is there and a 'bar' is loading. even when trying to boot in safe mode it would crash after the same amount of time in the same place. the only way to get into windows was to remove the wireless card. i told him to try it in other USB ports but with still no luck, none of them worked and he has 6. then i tried a USB pen drive and it had the same affect crashing widows immediately. so this makes me think it's not the wireless card but either the USB ports or windows. is there any way i can find out if it is hardware related or software related?

His computer is a 8 month old Packard bell but i don't know the exact specs

It could be that the USB drivers are corrupted. Try re-installing the chipset drivers and see if that helps.

well as he bought it from a shop he got no CD's with it at all. not even a windows one.

In that case you'll need to identify the mobo, then we can find the drivers to download:

Everest