No external drives being recognized

[bru]

Today I noticed my external hard drive was not being recognized. Spent some time looking in to it and then found nothing I connect to the USB ports (front or back of computer) is being recognized, not my digital camera or iPod which along with the external HD were working properly in the last few days.

The USB ports are providing power as the HD shows power and iPod charges but nothing is being recognized. Any thoughts? Could this be virus related? A quick scan using MBAM showed no infections. Googling this didn't lead me to a lot of help. It seems the USB ports are working properly in device manager.

I'd appreciate any help with this? Without the drives being recognized the computer is pretty useless for many of the things I typically use it for at this point.

[yardbird]

Post back your pc, operating system, any other security software, please so we can check into it..regards..

[bru]

Post back your pc, operating system, any other security software, please so we can check into it..regards..

Sony Vaio Desktop PCV-RS610

Windows XP SP 3

AVG 8 is my only running AV. I have other security programs installed and other than Spywareblaster I only use them on demand. MBAM and SuperAntispyware are the two I use regularly. I also have Ad-Aware and Spybot but rarely use them anymore. I have ATF and CCleaner. Anything else I can tell you about the system?

I did have an AVG alert about a week ago. Something about javascript but I did not save it and it never showed up in the AVG logs. AVG scan also has come up clean each time it has run. There have been no problems with internet such as redirects. Looking at event viewer I saw a i8042prt warning today after I had restarted the computer after I noticed this but nothing else in the last few days out of the ordinary.

[bru]

Anything? Well actually it's moot right now because my PC is dead after trying to run scans to see if I had Malware.