greetings! rather new to the terminal command stuff, any really dumbed-down help would be fantastic...so..
i installed mint 17.3 on old inspiron 700m, all was well!
until one day...
plugged in my usb storage device, it came up on desktop and then just as quickly went away, never to return.
there is still power to usb as i can charge my phone, and devices power up...but no recognition

have plugged in printer, flashdrives, etc, all which worked previously, same result.

(i have an old ubuntu installed on another partition, where everything worked, but tried plugging in device on that and also now nothing recognized)

when i "sudo lsusb -t|less" with nothing plugged in i get:
/: Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
/: Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
/: Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
/: Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/5p, 480M

when i plug in device i get:
[sudo] password for jiminy:
/: Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
/: Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
/: Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
/: Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/5p, 480M
(END)

samesame

anyone out there have a few tricks which can tell me:
a) is it a physical problem
b) something somehow turned off on its own
c) some great terminal commands to get usb back up and running

(I had seen a few other things online about getting the BIOS reset, perhaps...dont know if thats where prob is, as two operating systems now glean same results...and anyways, seems dell offers only windows drivers at current time)
thanks in advance!

Trying to see it with the Ubuntu side of that computer was a good start. Here are a couple of additional tests:

Plug it into a different USB port and into another computer. That will help you determine whether the port or the drive is at fault.

Try running this command to see whether the computer is seeing the device:

Not the command might generate a lot of output to wade through. You can pipe the output to a file and examine the file in a text editor, like this:

Let us know what you find out.