Hardware Wizard cannot find PnP Drivers for USB devices

I am running XP SP2 on a Sony Laptop. (preinstalled)
My plug and play generally works well, but has started to have problems with
the two USB ports. Devices I already have installed work well with these,
but when I try any new hardware (storage, ipod etc) the new hardware wizard
cannot find drivers for it. Updating the drivers on the USB devices does not
work for the same reason. (The wizard can't find any drivers) I have tried
deleting all the USB drivers and letting it reinstall -- it found the
hardware (all the USB ports etc) couldn't find any even for the basic USB
ports, so I used system restore to get back to the current state.
Drivers.cab appears to be in my windows/I386 and driver cache directories. I
allow the machine to search online for updated drivers. I do have a Windows
XP disk for another installation of XP, but not for this one.
Any hints? Corrupted driver file? Just a directory I need to point it
towards? Thanks in advance.

Lacking instruction from the gurus ;->, I proceeded on my own. Since this
is a problem that other people in the forum seem to have had and since not
all of these problems appear to have been resolved, I thought I would pass on
the technique that worked for me.
I noticed that the filenames in the C:/windows/inf directory were blue.
(indicating that they had been compressed to save diskspace)
I selected all of them, and used "properties" to decompress them (advanced,
uncheck the "compress to save disk space" box)
Then I specifically pointed the Found New Hardware wizard to search the inf
directory. This time it found the drivers. Cause or correlation? Others on
the group will be able to guess better than I, but worth a try anyway.

"cyberlaw" wrote:

> I am running XP SP2 on a Sony Laptop. (preinstalled)
> My plug and play generally works well, but has started to have problems with
> the two USB ports. Devices I already have installed work well with these,
> but when I try any new hardware (storage, ipod etc) the new hardware wizard
> cannot find drivers for it. Updating the drivers on the USB devices does not
> work for the same reason. (The wizard can't find any drivers) I have tried
> deleting all the USB drivers and letting it reinstall -- it found the
> hardware (all the USB ports etc) couldn't find any even for the basic USB
> ports, so I used system restore to get back to the current state.
> Drivers.cab appears to be in my windows/I386 and driver cache directories. I
> allow the machine to search online for updated drivers. I do have a Windows
> XP disk for another installation of XP, but not for this one.
> Any hints? Corrupted driver file? Just a directory I need to point it
> towards? Thanks in advance.