http://live.pirillo.com/ – John asks "I have a Toshiba Satellite notebook running Windows Vista Home Basic. For some reason a few weeks ago 2 of my 4 USB ports just stopped working all of a sudden. I’ve tried uninstalling the drivers but they reinstall themselves almost instantly. Are there any other settings I can change?"

There are a set of steps you can take to determine what’s really wrong:

• If you upgraded from XP to Vista, try running the device under XP as it may be an incompatibility in Vista.
• Try reinstalling your device drivers.
• Try running the device on a USB port you know is good. If the device works, then there may be a hardware problem that needs to be fixed.

Chris also recommends running USBDeview, a free program from Nirsoft:

USBDeview is a small utility that lists all USB devices that currently connected to your computer, as well as all USB devices that you previously used.

For each USB device, exteneded information is displayed: Device name/description, device type, serial number (for mass storage devices), the date/time that device was added, VendorID, ProductID, and more…

USBDeview also allows you to uninstall USB devices that you previously used, and disconnect USB devices that are currently connected to your computer. You can also use USBDeview on a remote computer, as long as you login to that computer with admin user.

When all else fails you may need to contact customer support and have the laptop services.

Do you have any suggestions for John?