My computer stopped recognizing internal hardware

I have a Dell Inspiron 1501 running windows vista, and one day when i tried to turn it on the sound icon showed a little red image circle with a white "x" in it. When I mute it, it just shows a red circle with a slash. My computer then told me my sound device wasn't installed. Then i go to get online to try to figure this out, and a caption came up saying the my wireless card wasn't installed. THEN, i go to plug in my itouch and none of my USB ports will work because it won't even charge my ipod. This has never happened before and I'm really frustrated. So I have come to you on my mother's desktop...please someone help.

One quick thing to check, click on the globe (start button), in the instant search field type services.msc and hit enter. Click allow when user account control pops up. Check that the Plug and Play service is started and set to automatic (the list is in alphabetical order).

If that doesn't work, click on the globe (start button), in the instant search field type devmgmt.msc and hit enter. When user account control pops up click allow. Do you see anything in device manager that has a red "X" by it or a yellow exclamation/question mark? If so please post what the devices are. If you don't see anything in device manager (i.e., it's empty) we need to know that too.

Uh, there's actually a ton of the yellow exclaimation marks : it starts at my modem (Conexant HDA D110 MDC V.92 Modem), then all of my network adapters{including my dell wireless wala mini-card}, also they are with everything under my sound devices and USB host controllers

Ok, double click on each of those and post the status of it (you can find this under the general tab). You're onto the right track, now we just need to see what happened and then we can fix it.

The status under each is "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver my be corrupted or missing (Code 39)". Uh oh, that doesn't seem good.

It's fine, but will be a bit of a pain for you. You should have a Dell drivers CD (usually it's blue). You can re-install your drivers from that easily enough. Some drivers may not be on the CD. If you can't find any of them let me know and I can help you out. See here for further assistance with Dell.

If you don't have the CD, on a computer that is working, what you need to do is go to the manufacturer's website. From there you will go to support>download software/drivers. Enter in your model number, serial number, asset tag, or whatever it asks for. Look for the device that is missing drivers and download the drivers. I suggest using a usb flash drive for this. Once you have all the drivers you need (I would just grab them all) place them on the usb flash drive and copy them to the problem computer. Install the drivers one by one and reboot the PC.

Ok i downloaded and installed all of the drivers but im still having the same problem. I did notice that when I look at the properties for each, under the driver tab i clicked driver details and its shows a big list of things starting with C:\Windows... or C:\Program Files...and they each have a box with a check next to them except for one that is C:\Windows\system32\drivers\libusb0.sys...could that be the issue because everything else without the yellow exclaimation mark doesn't even have C:\Windows\system32\drivers\libusb0.sys under their driver details.

This is possible. Go ahead and right click on one of the devices in question and select uninstall (note which one it is). We'll try this two different ways if need be. After you uninstall the device, run the driver installation for it off of the Dell CD. This should cause Windows to re-recognize the device and install the appropriate drivers for it. In theory, we're uninstalling the device, and hence removing the driver from active memory. Possibly re-installing it will then fix the issue. If it does not work, uninstall the device again and reboot the computer. Then try re-installing the driver. Let us know if this works.

I'm not sure what that file is (libusb0.sys). A Google search didn't reveal anything useful; though I didn't try very hard either.

Ugh no luck. I found out that libusb was something that got installed when my cousin jailbroke an ipod, though he said it got deleted. Maybe if I installed it onto a disc and reinstalled it onto my laptop and, then, properly uninstalled it, it could work. This might also run the risk of messing up the one computer i do have working though right?? gahh so confuzzled!!!!

I believe this is due to an OS problem, can you run a recovery?

how would I do that??

Hmmm, that should have worked.

Open device manager>view>show hidden devices>delete anything with a question mark by it and reboot the PC.

Try one last time and see what happens. If still nothing, try running the following command from a command prompt with admin privileges, "sfc /scannow". If it asks you to insert your OS disc do so. When it's finished reboot and try once more.

If that doesn't work go to start>programs>accessories>system tools>system restore and roll the OS back to a date when it did work.

If ALL of that fails perhaps you will have to backup your data and re-install the OS off the cd.

[QUOTE=seack79]Hmmm, that should have worked.

Open device manager>view>show hidden devices>delete anything with a question mark...QUOTE]

by this do you mean all of the devices that are giving me trouble, like the ones with exclaimation marks?

Sure, but stay away from stuff in the "Non-Plug and Play" list.

login to the os click on my computer right click properties > hardware> device manager> right >search for hardware..keep on refreshing and check the list....OR Search for the IRQ no: