hotplug problems

[Sam]

i made a fresh ubuntu edgy install on a friend pc, i386 desktop on his
amd64.
strangely the default kernel installed was -generic, but installing
nvidia drivers i changed it to -386

but the problem was with the usb modem, 
hotplug doesn work, no /etc/hotplug exist (usb pen dont works) and the
modem complain about no hotplug found.
in several reboots it works once (i dont really know how), the modem was
detected and also the usb pen was mounted.

lsmod | grep hotplug
pci_hotplug            31284  1 shpchp


plugging the usb pen (exept the time it worked) shows in dmesg:

usb device not accepting address #