Device Centre freezes at startup screen on vista premium

I have been having this issue for a couple months now...
When I plug in my ipaq 2490 to my laptop using usb, the device centre
freezes at the startup screen and won't go any further.
I am using the windows firewall with avast 4.7 pro anti-virus. I don't see
these two causing the problem because this was still an issue when I had the
trail version on Bitdefender IS 2008.... I also had Vista Manager as well
but uninstalled it because it caused other issues to my system, this was
still a problem before and after Vista Manager.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Paul

--

HP Pavilion V9417ca Entertainment Laptop
Vista Home Premium/dual core 1.8/160GB/2GB ram/335MB Graphic/17" widescreen
.... and a whole wack of bells and whistles SWEET!!