So I kill the Belkin USB hub that was attached to my PC. The BSOD on printing was a clue.

When I bought that hub, I got two. One for my PC, one for my G5. The one on my G5 was behaving fine. Until today.

I had my scanner and iPod plugged into it. Earlier today, I noticed that my iPod was syncing as if I had selected “Update” or had unplugged it and plugged it back in. That’s odd, I thought. 10 seconds later my trusty G5 had its very first kernel panic after 2.5 years of ownership. Something that looked like this:

I restart. Kernel panics are nothing to worry about until they happen again. 20 minutes later, I get an error message on the screen that my computer can’t communicate with the scanner, do I want to open the troubleshooting assistant? I wasn’t even touching the computer at the time, but Photoshop was open. Before I had a chance to react. Kernel panic.

Hmmm…I have two devices plugged into the hub and both devices mysteriously did something right before the kernel panic. Ya think?

So I completely disconnect the hub and now it’s sitting there cooling off next to its dead brethren. What are the odds…two identical hubs, two different computers, biting the dust within a week of each other. I’ll play musical ports with the scanner when I need to scan, and the iPod bumped the Wacom tablet off its port in the back of the machine.

I guess I have to buy replacement hubs sometime soon…right now, I don’t think it will be a Belkin.