Your experience with XP is similar to mine.
Hit or Miss.
Mostly miss
The same Hardware (Dell D4600, Intel 82801EB USB chipset. all 8 ports) runs flawlessly with any cable when booted on Ubuntu Jaunty. Only the Astak cable will work,
when it will work at all.
If I do manage to get connected (drive letters assigned), the SD card drive appears empty and the onboard storage fails to open.
I just tried on my Toshiba S1135 which has an Intel 82801DB/DBM chipset
It indicated "There may be problems", but I could open the files in both places for viewing. Write failed.

Can people with USB problems and running XP, post the USB chipset (shown in the device manager).