Duis mollis, est non commodo luctus, nisi erat porttitor ligula, eget lacinia odio sem nec elit. Sed posuere consectetur est at lobortis. Vestibulum id ligula porta felis euismod semper. Donec ullamcorper nulla non metus auctor fringilla. Aenean lacinia bibendum nulla sed consectetur. Cras justo odio, dapibus ac facilisis in, egestas eget quam. Cras mattis consectetur purus sit amet fermentum. Morbi leo risus, porta ac consectetur ac, vestibulum at eros. Sed posuere consectetur est at lobortis. Etiam porta sem malesuada magna mollis euismod. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Duis mollis, est non commodo luctus, nisi erat porttitor ligula, eget lacinia odio sem nec elit. Cras justo odio, dapibus ac facilisis in, egestas eget quam. Aenean eu leo quam. Pellentesque ornare sem lacinia quam venenatis vestibulum. Curabitur blandit tempus porttitor. Sed posuere consectetur est at lobortis.
I have not seen any malware that disables USB ports out in the wild, but since disabling ports can easily be done there could possibly something out there that we are not aware about.
There are many ways to go about disabling this port. Easiest way would be to modify a registry key. I'd check what the value of the following key is below.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINEのSYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR
"3" is to enable USB. "4" is to disable it.
There are other ways that the port can be disabled as well. You can do a search on the internet and you should get a lot of hits.
Please see if looking the regkey helps.
-Joji
This could be far off the mark, but have you recently upgraded to SP3? When I did I had to strip off everything attatched via USB, and then re-install my card reader (not a USB but off the MB card reader) and then re-add everything piece by piece. SB3 has some serious issues regarding externals and even internet access – it tries to connect before all the drivers are loaded and can lock up at boot … and at shut down.