USB Problem. Driving me nuts!

Thanks to Slarty for the tidy version.

All through this the USB drivers were reported as up to date and the ports are now all ok, where before they were all "exclamation marked". The drivers did install before via Troubleshooter, or Fixit but took ages.

This thread covered several common pains in the ass
The This Copy of Windows is not Genuine Message can be cured by downloading the WGA Remover from here Ultimate Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Remover
This is a newer program than WAT and seems more effective.

Events Log can be accessed just by typing events in Search and if you have a problem at startup, do a restart and this will give you some idea of what is at fault.

To open a Command Line interface press Windows Key and R.

To enter a Command Line as an Admin just type cmd in the search box while holding shift.

In Device Manager go into View and Show Hidden Devices to reveal greyed out "Ghosts".

You can quickly uninstall USB hubs and controllers and the ghosts by highlighting and pressing Del and then confirming.

Thanks to all who took the trouble to help.

As forthe memory stick. The date of the mpfilt.sys file was definitely the same as the date I first used it, so it looked like it caused the file to be rewritten.

I checked it with Chip Genius (MyMPx) and it showed the chip to be a cheap 4gb chip which had been faked to show up as a much larger capacity. the ebay seller conned me (and others) by saying the chips were a genuine but faulty batch that had bad sectors so they would be lower capacity than they were supposed to be. I told him what the chip was and what its actual capacity was and got most of my money back, just paying the value of a 4gb chip.

Also, I forgot to say - the Troubleshooter is quite useful. as the Search facility was also trashed by this.
Troubleshooter got it working, and it did get the USB ports working each time when they failed.

easiest way to access it is to open Control Panel and search for 'troubleshoot'

Solution to USB Ports not recognizing anything plugged in Windows 7, Message "hardware changes might not have been recognized" on USB Windows 7, USB ports dead Windows 7, "This version of windows might not be genuine" Windows 7, fake memory stick chip identification and check (tip - set Chip Genius to a much smaller capacity than the actual one claimed by the stick so that it IDs the chip quickly and then look the chip up on Google to find what it really is!)
How to use Command line on Windows 7. How to use Events Log on Windows 7. running full disk scan in Windows 7