User Feedback :: USB and keyboard problems

Hi,

first of all I'd like to say that I'm not really new to linux, but all new to DSL. I'd like to use it because I have an old celeron-machine that is just a little too slow for Ubuntu. I really like the speed of DSL. It runs faster from the live cd then XP from the hard-drive ;). Now to my two problems:

1.) I can't mount an usb memory stick. When plugged in, absolutely nothing happens. The LED does not even start to blink (well, maybe for 1/2 second...). There is a device node called /dev/sda1 but when I try to mount it, I always get the "this is no block device" error. I've tried to boot with the drive plugged in, but nothing changed. I also checked the dmesg for some "new usb drive found"- like message, but there is nothing. The two USB-hubs are detected correctly. I tried this with two USB sticks wich both work with ubuntu.
One more thing I noticed: when I run DSL on my laptop, it shows a "scanning for usb devices" message on startup, followed by "... managed by hotplug". None of these appear on the celeron machine.
I've done a search in the forum and found somebody that had a similar problem. He suggested to start with "noapic". But it didn't help...
On my laptop, it works fine.

The chipset is a VIA, Apollo I think...

2.) I can't change the keyboard layout. I'd really like to change it to german but it doesn't work. On the celeron, there appears no message when changing the layout. On my laptop it says "loading ...". But on BOTH machines, nothing changes. I've tried all three "de" layouts, but it always keeps the "us".

can you help a dsl-noob?

thx

Oh, I forgot: I'm using DSL 2.1b (from cd)

original here.