My wireless mouse wasn't working. I changed the battery but that wasn't the problem. Then I tried to plug in my printer, and it didn't work. I tried the mouse and the printer in all four of my USB ports and none of them worked.

I went into the Device Manager, went to the USB controllers, checked with all of the Properties, and they indicated that the drives are working fine. I tried to uninstall the drivers (as suggested in several other posts) but they wouldn't uninstall. Well, I let the uninstall run for a couple of minutes and it didn't do anything. Unless I'm not giving the uninstall enough time to do its thing, I'm kind of stuck as to what else to do.
I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it but I also can't do a shut down through the Start menu. It says that its preparing to shut down but it never does. I have to do a hard shutdown. When I noticed the USB ports weren't working, I did a (hard) shut down and then restarted. The port worked for a second then stopped.

I have a Gateway MX6960 laptop running on 2002 XP SP3.
And here's what's listed under the Universal Serial Bus controllers in my Device Manager:
Intel® 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27C8
Intel® 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27C9
Intel® 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27CA
Intel® 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27CB
Intel® 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 27CC
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
Thanks for any help you can pass my way.
