HELP: Computer freezes with USB or Media..

I have a Toshiba Satellite L305 with Vista. It had been doing perfectly fine before but for the last few weeks whenever I plug anything into any of the USB ports, my MP3 player, flash drive or anything else it starts up as if it's going to work correctly but after a few seconds it freezes. It does the exact same thing when I insert a disc of any kind or try to open an MP3 file. It always starts off like it's supposed to, opening the files promptly and smoothly only now it messes up after a couple of seconds. All I can do is move the mouse. It highlights things but is unresponsive when I try to click them and all I can do at that point is manually restart the computer.

I have no idea what's going on but some of my searches have shown that maybe the problem is my registry or a driver of some sort? I don't really know. Any help that I could get would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.