Here comes a computer at school, running XP.
A classmate actually use a USB Flash Drive which is designed badly that every time you insert it to a USB port there is a high chance of short-circuiting the USB port.
Well, short-circuiting the USB port isn't very big deal. The most it will do is trigger the current overload protection, and Windows will pop up a bubble telling you the USB port has been overloaded (can't find an image of it). Not kidding, I've actually tried this a few times when getting 5V from it.
However, when my classmate insert her badly-designed USB Flash Drive (and of course short-circuiting the port), Windows BSOD and reboot.
My question is: How could this actually causes a BSOD and reboot the computer? Shouldn't current motherboards/PSUs have enough current protection to handle short-circuit events? How could this kind of hardware exceptions trigger a "software exception"? Is that only an extreme rare case happening only to that computer?
Because I frequently need to get 5V from the USB port to power circuits that is possible to exist a wiring error short-circuiting the power source, I need to make sure that the current protection will work on my own computer so that even if there exists an error, it won't crash my computer and make me lose all opened documents and webpages. Till now the most serious situation I've met on my computer is the Windows bubble notice, but after I saw the school's computer BSOD-ing, I am quite worried of whether it is safe to use the USB port to power my hobbyist electronic hardware.