I have an IBM X40 laptop dual booting SUSE 10.0 and XP SP3. It has 2 USB ports and a 3rd smaller one for the power for my optical drive. While at my parents all of my USB ports stopped working. When I plug in my san disk cruzers the drive lights up for about a second and then goes out. My GPS asks if I want to connect to the computer, but then doesn't connect.

There is still power on them, I can plug in my devices that are powered only no data (I have one of those USB dogs that hump your computer when plugged in and it works fine).

The same thing happens in XP as it does in SUSE.

I also have a docking bay that has 4 USB ports on the back and I have the same problem there. I figured if the ports on the laptop died the ones on the docking station would be fine and when they weren't I figured it was some driver or software issue, until the same thing happened in linux.

Now I am totally stumped.

sounds like your usb controller may be dead. but that is only a guess.

sounds like your usb controller may be dead. but that is only a guess.

Is that a hard ware part that might be able to be replaced?

no, its part of the motherboard. but again, this is just a guess.