PC shuts down when Belkin Usb to Serial Adapter plugged in

I am running Ubuntu 12.10 on 2 different computers. This happens on both of them. When I plug in the Belkin usb to serial adapter, the pc goes to black screen and is locked up. I suspected the adapter was bad EXCEPT.... it works perfectly in Windows 7. Has anyone seen anything like this. I found a couple pages online about the driver but I suspect it has nothing to do with that since it shut down before I ever tried setting up the driver.

Thanks ahead of time.

Gary

I have been doing some testing on the above situation. If I select Advanced options for Ubuntu at boot and select a version BELOW 3.5.0-26-generic it does not crash when I plug in the adapter. ANYTHING higher crashes the system. The text on the crash screen seems to point to modem-manager but not sure.

Gary.

I have removed modemmanager (apt-get purge modemmanager) and the crash goes away. I guess the thing is, do I NEED modem manager?

Gary