Thanks guys. To clarify, I'm fairly positive that the "PCI to PCI Bridge" is the USB 3.0 card that I just installed, not the bus for the rest of the USB ports. It isn't the cause of the problem, it's a symptom showing that I can't install drivers for any devices at all.
Moving devices to another port and not working makes sense though. Windows has to treat them as different devices so still "reinstalls" them when you move ports. Every port will do the same.
Yeah, that's why that particular behavior made sense to me. If the OS doesn't need to reinstall the drivers, it works fine. It's only when new drivers need installing that things halt, whether it's for devices that are familiar or new to the computer.
Hmmm. Does Windows have a security setting where it's possible to prevent certain users from installing device drivers?
If there is, I would hope that there would be more of an indication of the block than things simply not working. The user is an administrator, and I'm able to monkey around with system files and the registry, so it would be weird if I just wasn't allowed to install new drivers.
Virus? Complete reinstall?
I do believe that there was a virus on this computer at some point, and that it probably mucked some things up as it was dragged out kicking and screaming. A complete reinstall would be challenging, given that this is one of those wonderful situations where the user has a Dell computer with no reinstallation disc. I'll check for a recovery partition, though... I'd prefer to avoid that solution if at all possible. I just wish there were perhaps some system files I could grab from another Windows 7 install or something. I don't know...
I've already reinstalled whatever software I could grab from Dell's site, but nothing seems to have corrected it...
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