USB Drives cause PC to lock up immediately

^Topic title pretty much says everything. Whenever I connect ANYTHING onto any of the four USB slots, the computer freezes immediately and I am required to forcefully shut it down. Earlier symptoms of this problem was that it wouldn't recognize any USB drives, and would say it's unknown device.. But now it just freezes.

Any idea what could be wrong ? My friend brought his laptop to me with this problem but here I am.. I was thinking it's more like software related but reinstalling windows had no effect etc. I've updated drivers and so on..

I also read on some forum that flashing your BIOS might solve this problem, but I have like, absolutely no idea how to do that, where to get the flashing utility, and laptops don't have floppy drive anyway.. . The MB on the computer is Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Li 1718.

Is there anything I can do or is the problem indeed in the hardware :/ ? Halp meh x(.