It's not going to help much, but I do see a LOT of systems where a particular USB device causes problems at bootup.
In the worst case this can hang the BIOS so it just never boots at all.
In all cases the device works fine if plugged in after the system is up, changing ports usually makes no difference and similar devices work fine. And it works fine on a different system!
I've come to the conclusion that some USB devices just mess up the interface on some systems, which in turn is rather fragile.
Life's too short, so if it's not that easy to only plug the "whatever" in when the system is up (and take it out later) I just replace it.