I recently purchased a laptop on Ebay.. An auction that said nothing regarding that it has 3 usb's one of which is broken (snapped off mobo). My problem is.. the two that appear to be fine.. They are recognized and installed by the windows OS . IT states that they are operating normally. Although, I have no device detection when I attempt to start something. Ive searched for the HP drivers and there are none. I have searched for the board but it's a part number and not a spec or manufacturing lead. Just updated bios as well. Any suggestions?

What USB devices have you tried to plug into it?

I plugged in an optical mouse and flash drive. I've also tried to use a volt meter to see if I can get juice from it. I touched the pins but don't seem to get anything from the 5+v lead and ground. I am thinking that if it didnt have power.. It wouldnt be recognized by the system. But than again and correct me if i'm wrong.. But the USB mount it'self is controlled by a controller somewhere up the circuit, which is getting power.. Not sure.. As I said. One is broken off and two remain. All are recog with no errors.

Physical damage may be hard thing to figure out...You may just want to invest in a 20 dollar USB PCI card that will give you 4 USB ports..

Physical damage may be hard thing to figure out...You may just want to invest in a 20 dollar USB PCI card that will give you 4 USB ports..

is there a special way to fold the PCI card so that it works in a laptop? :)

hah.

Yes. It's called careful.

I somehow, totally missed it was a laptop.