Cannot detect USB drives on Windows?

Recently in my home PC (windows XP) none of the USB drives started detecting. External hard drives, Ipod (gets detected via iTunes) but not through explorer or even an USB drive. Googling around landed me with this Microsoft support link that helped me resolve the exact issues. Also listed down possible places where they can fail and work around for them. Also trick I learned is to connect the USB drive directly to the USB ports in the mother board than through an USB extension cable.

Hope this will help, next time around when you face this.

Another known trick in the book for reducing the startup time is configure your options in 'Startup' tab of 'msconfig'. Start->run->msconfig.

You know more of this sort, send them in.