From hammondman85@gmail.com Tue Feb 05 13:20:20 2008
Subject:Re: OT joystick port for keyboard updates

Technology is a funny thing. What was the latest thing 5 years ago is
utterly useless now. 2 1/2 years ago I built my first computer system. I
remember I was trying to decide whether I should go with 512 megabytes
of RAM or 1 gigabyte (1000 megabytes) of RAM. I thought 1 gig might be
too much. Now I would never put less than 2 gigabytes of RAM in any
system. Technology is probably one of the most aggressive ever-changing
industries. It's literally almost impossible to keep up.

Walter, how old is your computer? It might be time to think about a
replacement. There's only so much that can be done to a system 5-10
years old without totally rebuilding the entire system. By that time,
you've bought yourself a brand new computer. How often do you reformat?
There are people who are dead set against reformatting your hard drive,
however, even with file cleaner software, sometimes the best thing to do
is wipe everything out and start from scratch. Is it a pain to reinstall
all your software again? Heck yeah! But one way around this would be to
create a ghost image of your hard drive after you've reinstalled
everything. That way, the next time you do a reformat, you won't have to
go thru the same agonizing process all over again. This will also save
you the trouble of having to reactivate Windows and Office again.

As for the USB ports, well it kinda goes back to the point above. It
might be time for a replacement. Have you tried using other USB devices
(keyboard, mouse, camera, ipod, etc.)? Did any of them work? One thing
you might look at is if your USB drivers are in Windows device manager.
If nothing else, do as someone else suggested and purchase a PCI USB card.

Good luck and I hope at least some of this info helps.

--
Ryan