Post-Power Surge Problem

kittex

I do not know if all this is related, but here goes...

Last week we had the mother of all lightning storms here. I turned on my laptop during it and a warning came up saying something like "There has been a power surge to a network device. Windows is disabling this port..." etc

I figured the device was my broadband modem, connected via an Ethernet cable, as it was the only thing then not working.
I tried connecting it using my USB cable. It didn't work on the first USB, but it did finally connect on my second USB port.

So I have my broadband now connecting through a USB port and it is working most of the time.
One worry is that I've been trying other devices on both ports today and the second USB port sometimes will not detect those.
The next problem is that my first USB port will just not detect anything and I really need it for using my printer and pen drive. Both ports were working just fine up to that day.

I'm running on XP.

As I said, I'm not sure if these things are all related, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

kittex

Just got a PCMCIA cardbus while I figure out what on earth has happened.

/talking to self