USB device not recognized

Hello,

I have a generic external hard drive. I have vista 32. Over the past few weeks I have been having problems with my computer not recognizing the USB device. In the past I was able to solve the problem by deleting the USB ports and then restarting the computer, at which point the computer would reinstall the ports. That no longer works. I have tried other suggestions that I have forums such as turning off the laptop, unplugging the power source and restarting etc, I have installed updates, looked for new drivers to install, installed the vista service pack, but no luck. I also followed the instructions included below and I had access to my hard drive for a few sweet minutes, but when I unplugged it to move the computer to another location and then re plugged the hard drive in, the same problem happened.

Any advice?

did this and it helped for a few short moments:
First is to ensure that the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR start value is 3.

If you are an administrator on the machine, ensure C:\windows\system32\drivers have SYSTEM user access especially USBSTOR.SYS.

If you don't have usbstor.inf in that directory or anywhere in c:\windows, go download from the web.

Go to Device Manager an uninstall the " ? " which was a result of the failed driver installation.

Plug-in the device, then when asked where to search, point to c:\windows\system32\drivers...