This is strange...

I got a message on a blue screen that says "Windows has stopped working to prevent damage to your computer" or something to that affect. It has only happened twice, and only involving this one flash drive I have. What happened the first time is I pulled it out and put it back in, then realized that I shouldn't have done that and took it back out, only to absent mindedly put it back in. (I had not slept much and no coffee so….) well after that the blue screen came up and said what I stated above and much more I couldn't read. Then there was no problem for a month. However last night my comp went into sleep mode (laptop, I closed it to put it to sleep) well upon me re-opening it and logging back on I heard this noise that sounded like the noise I get when I put in a flash drive (as it is always inserted to use the ready boost thing) only it happened like 20 times and then wouldn't you know it, that screen again. I ran lots of scans on my lappy and nothing seems to be wrong, the hard disk and mother board seem alright as well. I have a Toshiba Satellite, with Vista Home Premium on it, can anyone tell me what the issue is? PS I browse this forum a lot, love it!

I think you already know the answer Remove the flash drive and only use it as needed, not for Ready-boost, and always use the Safely Remove Hardware function when removing it. Do you really see any improvement using the flash drive for Ready-boost? Have you ever actually tried to measure any performance gain?

I think you already know the answer

Remove the flash drive and only use it as needed, not for Ready-boost, and always use the Safely Remove Hardware function when removing it.

Do you really see any improvement using the flash drive for Ready-boost? Have you ever actually tried to measure any performance gain?

So there isn't something horribly wrong then? LOL I hope not. I removed the flash drive this morning before I booted it up, and haven't put it in sense. I installed it in a way that I didn't have to use the safely remove option (it gave me two ways to do it…. weird) It did help make things a little faster, but it is not worth it if it is going to damage my system. Thankfully I just got done doing some back up and restore discs the other day, so my system is all backed up and safe! I also have a 2 year warranty on it so if anything happens I get a new one free!
Anyway thanks for the reply!!!!

Run without the flash drive for a week or so to see if the problem happens again. Please let me know how you make out. Thanks

Thought I would just give you an update. So far nothing bad has happened (and this laptop is less than 6 months old so I would hope it would be great!) however I did have an odd thing happen the other day, the Laptop just stopped doing anything, like it froze, for about 15-20 seconds, and then continued on like nothing even happened. Now that used to happen all the time when I had the CA Security system on my comp as it was not compatible with Vista (and yet you could only know that if you read the small print, they gave me an incompatible version!). Once I removed that from the comp things went well and I installed McAfee which runs wonderfully!!!!! Way nicer. However I did not think it would do the same thing, hold the comp up for a period of time. Normally that only happens if there was an update, but that doesn't hold it up, it just opens a small window that tells me it is doing something or it did something, so I am now on that window and not the one I was on before (I have it set to do that for my own purposes) so I am wondering if maybe that blue screen did something to my hard drive. I heard that screens like that can damage your system, is that true? It only happened twice so how bad could it be? (though like I said I have it insured so I am not extremely worried, only annoyed!) Thanks so far for all of your help!