Tech Help My USB Ports Aren't Working...

[Ventus]

Okay, so this morning I ritualistically played a game on my laptop before getting ready for work. Speaking of which:

Acer Aspire 5517 w/ Win7 SP1 Home Premium. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor TK-42 1.60Ghz. This thing has two USB ports.

I had my USB mouse plugged in (it's a typical run o' the mill logitech USB mouse), as well as my Xbox 360 controller plugged in, both working completely fine. Then I leave to work, eight hour shift. In the meantime, I suspect my idiotic brothers touched the laptop against my wishes (why the heck my mom or sister would allow those friggin' dolts on the thing is beyond me), but whatever.

Neither of my USB ports are working. I looked in Device Manager and the USB Controllers and everything in that submenu look completely fine; there are no triangles denoting a problem with the devices. I need help, will greatly appreciate it.

For the record, I looked at USB ports not working and nothing shown worked for me.

 

[Ronin]

I have a really simple remedy which might resolve this issue: restart your computer. I'm serious. Simply rebooting a computer resets all the internal devices to their original features (unless you manually saved something, or it had saved automatically beforehand). Perhaps one of the devices internally offset something in the USB sockets and they quit working. At any rate, it's definitely worth a try. Rebooting is the cure for many ailments in a computer, so good luck. :yes:

 

[tysonrss]

Yeah most fools leave their machines on for weeks on end then always complain about why it isn't working

 

[Fraxinus]

I agree with Thorium on this one. I mean, there have been school computers where one of their USB ports are actually broken, but when it's more that just a single port, it's usually just a little bug.

Huey has had this happen before, and I started panicking, thinking I corrupted my flash drive. A system restart usually will correct this. If you're one of those people who leave your machine on for long periods of time, you should at least give it a shot. Rebooting is normally very heplful with a lot of minor errors, because it does all of its reconfiguations and stuffs.

 

[Wolf Sage]

Did you try updating your driver software or scanning for hardware changes? Aside from the mouse and Xbox controller, did you try connecting any other devices to the USB hub? Although, if checking the Device Manager yielded no positive results, then it's possible that your USB ports are totally fried. I have no experience with Acer, but perhaps its time you get a new drive or a new laptop altogether... <_<

Rebooting might also suffice... :yes:

 

[Ventus]

Rebooting didn't help, unfortunately. I did a chkdsk scan last night, nothing came up. This is really irritating. I plugged in:

-360 Controller
-iPod Power Cord thingy
-USB Mouse x2 (tried another one because I thought "hey mine just might be broken")

None of it works. If your USB ports are totally dead, wouldn't they...not be detected on Device Manager or something? I'll try leaving this idiot computer off for a while and turning it back on, but I'm not holding my breath. This laptop took a couple punches to the face (literally), so I use an external monitor. Its battery is also pretty much braindead; I have to keep it on perpetual charge for it to function. So yeah, perhaps it IS time for a new rig. I hope it isn't; I just got Battlefront II last night and getting a new CPU ever so soon would crush too many dreams.

/trying hard/

 

[Petman1325]

Did you recently install a BIOS update to your motherboard or some sort of update that goes specifically for the chipset of your CPU?