Hello:

I've lost all three of my USB ports on my Gateway laptop that I bought about a year ago. I usually keep my Magic Jack plugged into one of them and my cell phone tether cable into the other.

Two ports stopped responding fairly abruptly about two weeks ago, but one still worked. I just juggled the connected devices around on that last one. Now, they are all unresponsive.

The computer will acknowledge that a USB device has been connected, but Vista sends up a balloon indicating that the USB device is not recognized. It sees the connection attempt, but no matter what is connected, it is not talking.

I've tested the ports using device manager and they all come back OK. I've deleted and reinstalled the driver package for my cell phone. My Magic jack lights up, but is not acknowledged. It's as if the ports are alive, but not communicating with the processor.

I have rebooted both with and without the devices connected many times. I even went as far as to restore the system to a date about a month ago which was before this problem started. Still no luck.

The cooling fan outlet is right next to the USB ports and it's quite a hand warmer. I'm wondering if that heat, coupled with the Magic Jack's power consumption might have just fried the USB ports.

Any suggestions?

Ed Vaughn, MBSWWYPBX