RC, I have rebooted my pc many times over several months, the open disks have been there several months but nothing I have been able to do has gotten them to close. Yes i did go into 'my computer' and click directly on each drive letter and tried to close from there but i get this Yellow Triangle ERROR alert titled PROBLEM EJECTING USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE, In the error box it says "windows cannot stop your MS/MS-Pro USB Device because a program is still using it". But I am not using any of them. None of the usb ports that I am referring to have anything plugged into them.

Owbist, thanks for the link. The hotfix isn't there and the links on the page take you back to Microsoft pages and they are no longer supporting Windows ME. I sent an e-mail to the notebook card manufacturer for their assistance and also sent one to the camera manufacturer. Will see what they say. Does anyone have the hotfix that I need?

humm well if all of them have died I would wonder why that is, if only one had gone bad that would be less questionable. You can certainly replace them, they are on a card that you plug into the pc slot for USB. did something happen to the pc prior to this usb failure? power failure, lightening, something strange in the pc itself? add any new programs? you might get the free belarc advisor tool and have it analyze your system and see if it shows anything strange. http://belarc.com/ a few things I would try: shut down the desktop and unplug the power cord for 30 minutes, power cycling* everything. Restart with nothing connected, then connect each USB component.*In power cycling I mean power off all peripherals that are connected to the pc, this would include printers, routers anything electrical that is hooked to the pc as well, leave all off and unplugged for the 30 mins. In your device manager under USB controllers what is listed? are there any yellow icons with ! point in them? (right click my computer, properties, hardware tab, device manager) this is an example of what you would get to replace your current card. USB2.0 PCI CARD Question> when you have been using your usb ports, at the time you unplug anything from them are you always using the safely remove hardware icon down in your sytray by the clock? This is essential, to click on that and select the item you want to remove, then wait till it says you can safely remove item.

Thanks for your responses. I did look up how to install a card in a pci slot, I would need more skill and knowledge than I have to do that. And when I thought about it, I do download pictures from our digital camera without a problem. I have been doing more research and talking to some friends who know more about computers than I do(not hard). From what I can gather, I can use an external hard drive having a 2.0 USB connection with a 1.0 USB port. It will affect(slower)the speed of the download. I am off to purchase the WD My Book Essential 320GB which is on sale at Best Buy. More capacity than I need at this point but good for the future and newer systems.