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Short circuit damaged the usb ports in my dell laptop

Hi there. I plugged a usb hub into the usb port of my laptop. Something went wrong and I had a short circuit. (At least it sounded like it). The machine went off (i guess as protection). When I rebooted it the system was not able to recognize the usb ports (it marks it as unknown device. I have two usb ports). Temperature went higer (about 10 degrees). If I plug a usb device into the upper one the machine freezes and I have to turn it off. The rest seems to be working fine. Is there anything I can do to fix it? Can I work around this problem by using a PCMCIA usb hub? Do you think I will have to change the board to correct the problem?
Tnx

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jamietoner

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nobus

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Watzman

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imacgouf

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Jewels1

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Guess what guys. Something happened (or not happened) and both my usb ports are working just fine! What a come back from the infraworld! I am so happy I am going to split the points between all of you for coming to my help.
Tnx a bunch

jaisayan

USB Ports are short-circuit protected. Each port is limited to 100mA for low power devices and 500mA for High Power devices.

As of my experience, I got Message " Usb device over current status detected. System will shutdown in 15 seconds" on my ASUS Motherboard, when i accidently shorted Pin1 & Pin4.

Under Windows 7 you can go to Device Manager>USB controllers>USB root Hubs.
Now, Go to properties of each root hub, under Power tab you can find total available power on each port.