USB problem

[kiosk]

Problem description: USB devices not recognized in XPSP3.

I'm running two computers, both XP SP3 Professional. One of them is an Athlon 64 and other one is an elderly Pentium 2.

Athlon is working great - I have four USB devices, a printer, pen drive, Mp3 player and a digital camera - and all of them are working right and they connect with no problem to the Athlon.

However, when I try to connect these devices to the Pentium 2 (any out of four of them - doesn't make a difference) I get the following error:

A bubble pops up and says: "USB Device not recognized. One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it."

When I open up the list of connected USB devices, I see my stuff listed as "Unknown Devices".

Attempted fixes: Tried to install drivers, poked through the INF folder. Googled from 11PM till 4AM.

What's bizzarre is that the XP installation on P2 is completely fresh - and athlon has the same XPsp3 version but they behave so differently. What's the cause of this and how can I remedy the problem? I really need to get USB working on a P2.

[kiosk]

AN UPDATE:

I tried both Puppy and Ubuntu to see if the problem is hardware related.

Both the MP3 player and memory stick work normally under both linux distros!
USB mouse does work under linux, but the pointer movement is rather choppy.

Under Windows, when using an USB mouse, the laser never lights up and the pointer remains frozen on the center of the screen. Device manager shows it as an "unknown device". So basically, this is a Windows XP problem.

What now? :confused:

[Haze]

didn't see if you tried it, but it's one of the top google results so maybe..

http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/usb-device-not-recognized/