I have a Toshiba satellite LAPTOP about 2 years old. Out of warranty. All 4 usb port stopped working. Any device (ipod, thumb drive, camere etc) plugged in gets the message device not recognized. I check for drivers and it says all there. A friend and I determined it was probably the chipset on the motherboard (he determined that for me). My question is if i GET a PCMCIA to usb adapter, should it work if the chipset thing is bad? I just need to be able to attach my devices to laptop and can't afford to replace the chipset (or whatever it is called) Didn't want to order the adapter if it wouldn't work anyway. Any advice will be great. I did read the other threads and have basically DONE everything advised there. To make sure it is a bad chipset i'm afraid you would need to take it to a shop to find out SINCE it's a laptop...
Go to Device Manager and right clik ALL instances of USB roots and hubs and select remove/uninstall...you will recieve a warning...ignore it.
Upon re-boot they will automatically be re-installed.

If this still does no good try re-installing your MBoard drivers from the Driver CD that shipped with the laptop...

Try all the above options before you take it to a shop and/or buy a PCMCIA card.