USB port quit working

[jbock]

Recently my USB ports quit working and I can't figure out why.  I have two in the front of my computer and two in the back.  None of them work. Gateway tells me I need a new USB.  Are they all linked somehow that they could all go bad at once?  Gateway originally told me to reinstall my motherboard driver which did nothing.  I have tried several devices with several different cables and nothing works.  If I have to replace the USB port is that something a novice can do or do I need to pay someone to do it?  I have a gateway desktop with Windows ME.  We bought it in 2001.  I am somewhat clueless when it comes to hardware.  Please help.

[GX1_Man]

Do they show in Device Manager? Are there any exclamation points by them? Under properties does it show them working properly? Any unusual occurrences prior to this?

[jbock]

They do show in the device manager with nothing next to them.  Under properties doesn't show anything unusual.  I cannot recall anything that happened differently when they quit working.  They just quit.

[GX1_Man]

Well assuming it is inoperable (which we don't really know yet) you can buy a PCI USB card for about $10-15 and get up to four USB 2 ports (all in the back). Even if they are not REALLY broken it will solve the problem.

[patio]

One other thing you can try no guarantees would be to right click every instance of USB listings in Device Manager and select remove...you will get an error message ...ignore it.
Do this for all of them and shutdown and power back up. Windows will automatically re-install all the USB roots and hubs for you and you might find them working again...