Hi, I have a laptop with a 2.0 usb port...just last week it was working fine when plugging in my (ipod, phone, external hard drive) but it seems to have become slow...it doesn't recognize my ipod anymore, and it takes forever to recognize my external hard drive...what happened?

Have you recently changed Power Plans of your notebook ? Do you often sleep or hibernate your notebook lately and then resume normal operation again ? If you do, after a few resumings, USB devices may not work properly. Other than this, there may have happened driver corruption. Did you install any programs for your USB devices that may have attempted to install their own USB drivers ? In Device Manager expand Universal Serial Bus Controller and see if there is any exclamation mark or red cross beneath a device. Anyway, remove all your peripheral USB devices and then remove/uninstall all USB controllers in Device Manager and restart your notebook. Vista will reinstall drivers for all USB controllers. Then see if your USB devices function properly again. Regards SuatCINI