Dell Dimension 5150 and bad usb ports

My dell's 2 usb port on the front recently started throwong up "power surge" window every timeI plugged something into them. I read somewhere that a recent update from microsoft was a possiable cause of the problem n I didn't think muchmore about it since it did start after I did the last update. But I tried to use one today and it didn't even see the ext. HD I tried using. So Looking closer I saw that they were both mangled and the pins were touching.. I seperated the pins and tried to restart the computer and at first the amber liight for the power button went on and off. Now It will light up the #1-2-3 adn the HD icon and that's it. Dell's TS page it's "Another Failure has occorred". Could I need to replace them to get it working? I unpluged ths ribbon and it wouldn't do anything!! Oh and I have removed the vid card- pci usb card and the modem card.