Upgrading my USB cable crashed PC!!

I'm in the midst of upgrading all my cabling from generic "cable-the-kit-was-delivered-with" to higher quality cabling.

I ordered Vovox mic cabling (not delivered yet) and also a Wireworks UltraViolet USB cable to connect my sound interface with my PC. That came today and so I connected it up as the first stage in my upgrade.

Bearing in mind that I had no issues with previous cabling other than whatever self-noise was present, and everything worked OK, I was rather surprised that unplugging my generic USB cable and replacing it with the Wireworks Ultraviolet cable caused my PC to crash instantly. Why would this be?

I rebooted and the connections all work OK. The sound quality on a test recording was a touch clearer and cleaner. However I have become aware of an incredibly faint and only occasional swishing noise.

Could it be that having a quality USB cable has now made the presence of already-there-type self-noise more apparent, or is it something else I haven't thought of?

Cheers.