USB devices "disappeared"

First of all I would like to apologize for not listing the system specs; I'm trying to help a friend, and will list them as soon as I get them from her.

Yesterday she was working on some lesson plans, and she had her printer and external hard drive plugged in (both USB); she went to the store to get some paper and when she returned, both devices had disappeared. I told her to delete all the USB devices from her laptop and restart; she said now her webcam isn't working. She never uses it so that's not a problem, but it might be indicative of a root cause for the other issues; I'm not sure.

This morning she told me that flash drives work fine; just devices that use the USB cable aren't working. Obviously I told her to find some other cable and test that out; but 2 cables going bad simultaneously...well it's not unheard of but also not likely. She's currently looking for another cable so I thought I would post where some more knowledgeable people are to assist, especially since I don't have Windows 7 and have only used it a couple of times.

Oh, I also told her to download/install the latest BIOS and drivers from Toshiba, so hopefully she's doing that.

It's never happened before, so I suppose it could be the motherboard. I'm eliminating all other possibilities first though. She's not really helping me help though; I'm still waiting for her to get a different USB cable!