USB ports conduct power but do not let attachment (eg mouse) work.

Try using a PS2 keyboard and pressing F2 to enter BIOS if this is possible.
Then navigate the the Peripheral settings and make sure that the USB ports are switched on or, if available, set USB ports to legacy support.

I have seen power supplies going bad, killing many components, most especially anything connected via USB.

Hi,
1-try to connect another USB peripheral like USB flash or something else,if this does happen again you have some problem with your USB chip or maybe your main board or USB cabling in your laptop (some kind of short circuit),
2-if your problem still did not solve you have some short circuit or problem with your USB device and try repair or replace the device ,
3-if your problem persist and doesn't solve even with another device you must consider this note:

some USB devices needs 500ma current mode that only available in PCs and some devices and most laptop available in the market just support 100ma USB port

It may have a manufacturing defect. Have you tried it on another computer? If it works on another computer, see whether it works when connected to a different USB port on the laptop. If it does, then you may have a bad or damaged USB port on the laptop. If it works on another computer but still does not work on the laptop when connected through an alternate port, then see whether some other device will work when attached to the laptop's USB port. If neither the mouse nor the other device work when connected to a USB port, then you have a problem with the USB controller. If an alternate device does work when connected to the USB ports of the laptop, and if the mouse works when connected to another computer but does not work when connected to the laptop, then you have a software problem, and probably need to change the mouse driver in a control panel or setting in the operating system of your laptop.

I think this will help.
A USB Connector has 4 terminals.The two terminals at the ends are to supply 5 Volts. The middle two are for data transfer.


If the terminals at the end are OK the device will get power (5V). Then the computer can detect something was attached. But if one of the middle terminals are damaged, your computer cannot recognize the device.
The problem might be with the USB port of the printer. Connect it to a different port. Does it (mouse) work on your desktop machine? Then the problem is not with the mouse.
If the mouse fails on all USB ports, the problem is with the mouse. Check the USB jack of the mouse. Sometimes the damage is visible. Or else one of the 4 wires of the mouse cable is disconnected (damaged) due to bending of the wire. In this case, buy a new mouse or replace the mouse cable.

Here are some trouble shooting steps you can try relatively easily....
If the mouse connects via a USB cable, try connecting it on another USB port while the laptop is on.
If it is an optical mouse, check to see if the LED(s) underneath are lit. Change ports until LED lights.
If you have another computer also with a USB mouse and it is working, try a mouse exchange. If the non-working mouse also does not work on the other computer and the mouse from the other computer works on your Toshiba Satellite laptop, the problem is likely with the non-working mouse.
Finally, If the non-working mouse is a wireless one, its battery may be dead. Try a new battery in it.

Seems that your laptop's USB ports are not providing enough power to the cooling pad. This could be due to you connecting too many USB peripherals to your laptop. Test if you can get the cooling pad to work by disconnecting all other USB devices.
As a permanent fix, you can buy an active USB hub (one powered by external power source) & connect your cooling pad to it.

Hi, well there is a couple things you can do, first check for the usb devices in device manager, which is at control panel, system, hardware tab, device manager button and usb devices will be at the bottom, if there are any exclamation points or x's then there would be a driver problem. Chances are there is not a problem with this section, next double check your bios if you already have too, make sure in peripheral devices that your usb is enabled. Finally do some of your standard tests with rebooting the computer with the usb mouse hooked up and reboot the system with it disconnected to see what difference you get, then test possibly with another usb device, either printer or external hdd or another mouse. When you find out if its the mouse or if its the hardware port or if its the drivers, for mouse just replace, for hardware port don't use it anymore or replace motherboard, for drivers attempt either a windows repair or possibly a chkdsk since the usb drivers get installed from within windows.

It is faulty. Something internal is broken. I feel the only way to remedy this is replacement, sorry. I have seen this many times.

This is a common problem with many USB devices. Most will work on hub but some are designed specifically not to. The biggest offenders in this category are Palm Pilots/Pocket PCs and wireless peripherals. They do this because they consume a great deal of the USB bandwidth and splitting it would make everything connected to the hub have connectivity problems. If you really need an extra USB port or two on a laptop, they do make a PCMCIA->USB card as shown here: http://www.buyextras.com/syusb202pcca.html?gclid=CN_JsfLGno4CFR3NgAodIRRvTg