USB Ports failed in 4 month old HP Pavilion dv6000z

Help! When I was using my laptop copying files to a flash drive, and using the internet at the same time, my laptop locked up. I held down the power button for 5 seconds and to my horror, when the computer booted up, none of my USB ports worked with my flash drive. I spent about $1400 on this laptop back in August. What is wrong with my laptop? I hope its not my motherboard...

HP Pavilion dv6000z
AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-52 1.6 GHz 2x512KB L2
2 GB DDR2 SDRAM 667 MHz
80 GB 5400 rpm SATA Hard Drive
Nvidia Geforce Go 7200
Windows XP Professional SP2 with all updates

 

Do your USB ports work with any other USB devices, like a mouse? It's possible that it's just your flash drive that's broken.

 

Can you try to use the USB stick in another computer? If it works, then your laptop might be the problem.

If you can use other USB devices on the laptop, you probably damaged the USB stick.

Also, try right clicking on My Computer->select 'Manage'->go to 'Disk Management'->look for a device without a drive letter. Give it a drive letter by right clicking on that un-lettered partition and select 'Change drive letter.'

If you are willing to lose all the data on that stick (since you're copying files I assume the original files are still intact), you might want to try reformatting it. Here's the only two ways I know how to do that and these may or may not work depending on the damage done to the USB stick:

FIRST METHOD (good if the computer at least recognizes the device and gives it a drive letter)
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Right click on the drive letter for your stick under My Computer.
Select 'Format'
Perform a full format and not a quick format.

SECOND METHOD (good if the device still works but the computer is not giving the stick a drive letter)
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Right click on My Computer, select 'Manage'
Go to 'Disk Management' and look for the USB device. It's partition may or may not have a drive letter.
Right click on the partition that you have IDed as the USB stick, and format it with a full format.
If the 'Format' option isn't available, try changing the drive letter or deleting/recreating the USB's FAT32 partition.

Good luck.

 

I turned off my laptop and booted it again. Surprise! It works again. I wonder what the problem was.. I guess system restore took care of it. Anyway, I'm just glad that it works and I don't have to shell out more money for a repair or new laptop. Thank you for your suggestions