USB Devices not recognized

[BewareOfButtlice]

All of a sudden today when i got home from school, went to go get some of my bank information off my USB flash drive and external hard drive and windows says they arent recognized or malfunctioning. Ive tried using my USB Hub, front ports, and back ports. Neither of them work. I went and used the same Flash Drive on several of my other computers and it works just fine.

Searched the internet for a while now and found nothing but junk about how ppl fixed it, for example, by using the ports in the back instead of the front.

[The Saviour]

What version of Windows?

Have you gone to Windows Update for the latest "high priority" updates?

[BewareOfButtlice]

Windows XP Pro SP2 5.1.2600 (all recent updates)

[The Saviour]

Have you made any recent hardware or software changes to this computer that may be responsible for this?

If they were working yesterday...have you tried doing a System Restore to a previous date?

[BewareOfButtlice]

nothing new added to the computer. just out of the blue today stopped working or recognizing any USB stuff. Disabled system restore for security reasons.

[The Saviour]

Running out of ideas here...

Has the computer been on all day?  If so...have you tried a reboot?

I know these may sound like silly questions...but shoould, at least, be tried...

[The Saviour]

You may also want to take a look at this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817900

[CBMatt]

Have you taken a look at the Device Manager to see if there are any yellow exclaimation points or question marks?

Right-click on My Computer and go to Properties.  Click on the Hardware tab and then Device Manager.  Let us know if you see anything.

And although you haven't added anything, have you made any changes?  Messed around with any files or settings?

[BewareOfButtlice]

ive tried nearly everything :X

I did go check on device manager, the only yellow exclamation marks are for my TV tuner. Restarted my computer twice, and did a shut down and waited for 5 min then started back up again. Well actually the things that do work on USB is the keyboard and mouse. They are receiving power, getting LED light up on my USB Hub. Usually able to fix these sort of things but this one has baffled me.

Ill take a look at that support link after school today, thx Savior, ill update if if works out.

[patio]

You can try this as well...
In Device Manager right click every instance of USB including roots and hubs and select remove....you will recieve a warning...ignore it.
On re-boot Windows will automatically install the USB drivers.
See if this works.

[BewareOfButtlice]

Just tried all of that stuff with still no luck. I checked on this other website to check registry for the right DevicePath and that is right. Also said to delete INFCACHE.1 in c:\windows\inf and reinstall the device. Got RegistryBooster2 and ran the error scan on registry with tons of errors but none related to USB (still fixed them all). Neither of those worked.

[patio]

Right click My Computer and select Manage...then Disk Management,
Find the thumb drive and right click it and select properties...
How is it being reported ?
Does it say Raw ?

[BewareOfButtlice]

no flash drive being detected, only my hard drive with 3 partitions, 2 cdroms, and one virtual cdrom

[patio]

Do the same in a machine that's recognising it and report back...

[BewareOfButtlice]

Reported as

Disk1
Removable
 -- Healthy (Active) w/ FAT partition.

In Removable Storage under libraries its as Sony Storage Media USB Device