well, that is an interesting turn of events.... normally the newer laptops work with the least amount of issues.

tried different USB ports on the machine? i KIND of want to lean towards maybe motherboard's chipset driver(s), or perhaps the USB controller driver itself, i can't remember if they're seperate anymore(i don't think they have been for probably a decade). maybe i'm really off the wall, but if you have a USB hub, try connecting through that? if not, perhaps time spent in the device manager playing with the USB transfer size and the latency timer might solve the issue? otherwise, you might have to contact Dell about any ideas for a fix(or perhaps a Dell forum?). last time i did that, it was pretty useless, i have a hard time understanding the Indian accent.

also(since it wasn't specified), XP SP3 is required for V5. XP SP2 has worked for someone who has downloaded the missing files required that SP3 adds, but i don't remember what they are anymore.