the usb ports on my computer do not work for some reason, but they seem to be operational. for example, i plug an optical mouse in and the red light in the mouse turns on but the mouse doesn't work. the usb ports are displayed in the device manager correctly with no errors or anything. my brother built this computer and he is in college now so he can't help me. can anyone help me plz? thanks.

install the driver for the mouse. also check bios..make sure usb is enabled.

wait a minute- is the DEVICE listed in the manager? ie: the mouse? in other words..did windows detect and install the actual device?

ok, it's not just the mouse, i was just using that as an example. all my usb devices don't work. keyboard, scanner, camera, etc. all drivers are installed. how do i enable usb in bios? when i turn on my computer with the usb mouse plugged in, it says no mouse detected.

On a lot of newer boards the bios has no option to disable USB. Besides if it shows up OK in device manager I think it has to be enabled. You may, however, need to enable USB keyboard support in cmos. In the meantime I assume you're using a regular mouse and KB. With the OS up and running plug in the scanner or camera and see if they're recognized.

interesting...the scanner did work when i plugged in it. i guess it is the keyboard usb thing. however, when i went to that option in cmos, it was disabled and greyed out so i couldn't change it. how can i fix that?

ok, i tried plugging in the usb mouse and it said it had to install some usb human interface thing. and i plugged in my usb keyboard and it said it had to install a usb composite thing. i have no idea what these are and how to install them. plz help!