[Fey]

Okay, this has been an on-again, off-again, problem for about a year now. And, yes, the first answer I'll probably get is 'just do a reformat', well, I would really rather find alternate solutions FIRST since the problem makes doing that a bit dicey.

Okay, about a year ago I did those lovely 'you're computer has updates' bit that most computers get. I updated, rebooted, and life went on. Well, not entirely. Because now my computer didn't know it had USB ports. At all. I have seven of them, so I found it odd that NONE of them worked. I poked around the 'net looking for answers. I tried their solutions, save the reformat, and nothing worked.

So, I just lived with the fact that they didn't work. It's hard to reformat when you can't do major backups via USB to external devices. A couple more updates and LO they're back! For a while. Then, I notice that my media ports(think camera memory stick drives) are gone. Same thing as what had happened to my USB ports.

Now, every few weeks one or the other MIGHT be back, but only for a short amount of time. Right now my media ports work, my USB are gone. I'm now terrified to do any computer updates as i reeeeeeeeally need at least one thing to work for when I get back from vacation.

Does anyone know what I can do to fix this, sans reformatting? I can spend the next month burning stuff to CDs and DVDs if that's my only option, but I'd really rather not.