USB ports have stopped working

I have 4 USB ports on my laptop and they've all but one become suddenly unresponsive (or selectively responsive)... The ports were working fine this morning. I have a wireless USB mouse which was plugged in. I plugged in my phone to transfer some files, and the mouse stopped being recognised. Now only 1 of the ports seems to do anything at all. It still reads my USB stick and I can open documents from there and I can still access my phone (via this 1 port). My mouse won't connect any more and says 'USB Device Not Recognised' when connected. It's a Trust mouse and is plug and play only, there are no drivers to download. I have gone into device manager and done 'Scan for hardware changes'. I've also uninstalled all USB Host Controllers in the device manager and rebooted. I've done a system restore to yesterday when it was fine but nothing's worked thus far. Any ideas?? I'm really stuck now and it's a real pain! Thanks very much in advance!

EDIT: By the way, I've tried the mouse on my housemate's computer and it works, and he lent me his mouse, which doesn't work...

You uninstalled the USB drivers, rebooted and didn't bother to reinstall them? Thats one huge error people make when trying to troubleshoot. I recommend you reinstall those and try again.

Do any of the troubled ports still supply power to charge your phone or light up your USB mouse? If not, you could be having an electrical problem with that portion of your laptop mobo.

OK all ports seem to be charging my phone, so it's not a power issue. Just seems so odd that only 1 is now transferring data. I uninstalled the drivers yes, but they install on boot automatically anyway, so they're all re-installed now. In my device manager, there are 3 items showing an exclamation mark in a yellow triangle, i.e. are not properly functioning. These are "ENE CIR Receiver", located under Human Interface Devices (which I think may be the cause of the problem, since mice etc. are considered Human Interface Devices are they not?). And "CDC Serial" and "Unknown Device", both located under Other devices are also showing the yellow triangle exclamation marks.

I can download the ENE CIR Receiver from the HP website here:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/s...tem=ob-75589-1

is it worth me uninstalling my current ENE CIR Receiver which does not seem to be responding, and downloading and installing this one?

ENE CIR Receiver refers to the InfraRed device, which I gather you laptop has. (edit: I am assuming your wireless mouse doesn't actually use this device.)

A Google search shows CDC Serial to be a USB to Serial driver (though some smart phone apps seem to use this driver as well), and likely what you need to re-install. You should be able to locate/download the driver from the laptop manufacturer's support/drivers website.

For the Unknown Device, I suggest downloading the driver from the laptop manufacturer's support/drivers website. There are various instructions on the Web for determining what device this is.

Right well finally got it working by following. Did this for all those who may ever get a problem:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...c-86a7225f4534

I tried manually downloading and installing all drivers that weren't working, then I deleted all USB controller host files. Turned off my laptop, took out the battery, left it for 20 minutes of so (hello washing up!), then powered it back up with no USB devices plugged in, then after it reinstalled all of the drivers automatically I plugged in the USB wireless mouse connector and hey presto! Very strange... Since I'd deleted the drivers and rebooted before, so the battery seems to have done it :S