Windows 7: win 7 not recognizing usb devices

the issue here is I have several usb devices(external HDD and flash drives), when I insert the devices into the usb port either of 2 things happens, it takes at least 20-30 seconds to show or nothing happens(in this case I can sometimes get the device to be recognized if I go into administrative tools-computer management-disk management and assign a drive letter) I am running Windows 7 64bit on my laptop with 4gb mem and 500gb HDD. the laptop is only about 5 months old and this only started happening about a month ago, before the items used to "pop right up". I dont have this issue on my desktop (Windows 7 32 bit) thanks

Sometimes I had to go into my computer and look and click on several of the drives to find the usb.
You shouldn't have to do that but that's how it is for me on a couple of flash drives I have.
Do a search for flash drive problems in upper right corner and see if there are any posts that might help you. IMO