59Rocker

*** Update 2 *** Following a few days of experimenting I can confirm that in my case the problem is hardware. When I lose USB a firm thump on the left side of my notebook will restore the two ports beneath and also the two at the rear. My notebook is just over a year and well-travelled so something common to all of my ports is clearly loose or more likely in need of soldering. Nigel

*** Update *** After one whole day with working USB ports I shut my laptop down and when I powered it up again they'd gone... 'USB device not recognized'! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr I spoke too soon! Nigel

I lost my USB ports a few days ago and having tried everything I could find on the net (short of re-installing Windows) the following worked for me: Enter your BIOS during boot and look for 'Legacy USB Ports'. The setting was ENABLED and out of interest I changed it to DISABLED, my USB ports are now working again! I hadn't touched my BIOS settings prior to losing USB and 'restoring defaults' in my BIOS ENABLED Legacy USB. I'm running Windows XP Home on a Fujitsu Siemens AMILO Pro notebook. Good luck. Nigel