USB port or uSB device or OS not working as it should

Hi all,

I am trying to help out a friend. He is a senior who has recently inherited a Dell Latitude C610 from a relative.

Everything was great until we tried to use a USB flash stick. There was no power to the stick from the USB port and there is no indication that the machine recognised the device. Then we tried to connect a digital camera to the USB port with the same result. When I checked the Device Manager, the USB is showing as "working properly".........

The laptop is running on Windows XP professional. It has a floppy drive connected to the parallel printer port but there is no CD or DVD drive. That's the reason for trying to use the flash stick to install programs and loading data.

Any idea what's wrong?????????? All helps are appreciated.

***His relative is out of the country .... so no help from there***

HC