Why won't my brother's computer recognize stuff automatically?

[chockomonkey]

I helped him build a computer for himself awhile ago. I got the stuffs off newegg. In any case, he told me the other day that from the day he has had it that things, when plugged into either a usb slot or firewire slot, don't automatically get recognized as being there and show up. He said that in the past he could get it to show up by restarting his computer, but recently that hasn't worked which prompted his talking to me about it.

I really had no clue, but i plugged in my flash drive and nothing happened. So i went to the device manager and hit "find new hardware" and the window locked up. I had to close it by shutting down its process.

Has anyone ever heard of this? anyone know wtf is going on? Help would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[lithium726]

what is it, and does it have a via chipset?

ive had some big problems with VIA's USB controllers, and get the problems you are describing.