Update: I bought a new cable at Radio Shack. Went to download the driver, found out that NOOOO!!! HP did NOT have the drivers available, for ANY recent Windows systems. Come to find out, the page that was set up with links for downloading the applications was bogus, when you clicked on the link, you got a whole page of information, but bottom line, the drivers weren't available for downloading and hadn't been since 2009. This INFURIATES me!! My Laserject 5L is completely useless now. And no, I don't want to mess around on E-bay trying to find and install this or that for my old laptop. I can't even get the printer to work with the old laptop which has a prong cable connection. The print job goes to the printer, the printer turns on but never prints. Eventually I get an error message. So I don't know what the problem is. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the driver from the computer over and over again, so maybe there is something wrong internally with the printer. My PC guy told me I could get a pretty good laser printer for 100 bucks, and when all's said and done I would probaby have to spend over 100 bucks messing around trying to fix the old system, with possibly no good results anyway, so I'm giving up on my old 5L friend. I am NOT very happy about it!! :(

USB ports can go out, or the part of the motherboard that supports the ports can malfunction. You could also have a loose connection, depending on how this was built. It's a little strange that they are intermittent in that they work and then immediately go out. The only suggestion I can give you -- other than taking it back to where it was built -- is to shut down the computer, and then unplug it for a half hour; then plug it back in and boot up. Sometimes this fixes a malfunctioning USB port.

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?