USB problem please help

[happyhero]

Hi Can anybody help me out. I am reasonably good with PC's and end up fixing my friends often. This time my friend's boy deleted something to get rid of a game and the PC was a little messed up. There were no restore points, in fact restore would not start, so I followed some info from the Microsoft site and booted from the XP disk and used the recovery.

This seemed to sort it out although I saw it needed some spyware removed etc., so I got my mass storage USB device out, which has some good spyware killers on it and antivirus software, but when I plug this in nothing happens, ie it is not recognised. I have more than one and have proved them on other PC's. Checking Device manager I notice that there is no mention of USB etc which you normally see.

When my friend brought this PC into work for me to look at he told me he could not connect to the internet because it was so messed up. So I would like to sort things out here before he takes it away but have no access to the internet with this PC, so my question is how do I get the USB working for now with no internet access so that I can carry on cleaning up. Are there some drivers that would help that I could get from another PC connected to the internet and put on a floppy.

I think this PC is not so messed up that I can't repair it but not having USB working is hindering me.

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[Igorian]

What is the current status of anti virus / spyware software? If it's out of date or non existent, I would load some via the CD and complete a scan before continuing. I can recommend a combination of Avast Anti-virus and M$ Anti-spyware, although there are many others (these are both currently free)

Check the BIOS to make sure that the USB controller is enabled.

You could also run a system file check, or even perform an XP repair install to replace any damaged to missing system files.

Can you post more details of the machine including details of XP installed (service packs etc)