USB ports not working, device manager says they are fine

I am on a Toshiba A15-S127 which was working running XP SP3 until a couple of hours ago. I was on it, and all of a sudden the USB ports just stopped working. I dont know if this is relevant, but i did not have any problem with the USBs before my laptop started doing random "chkdsk" at startup. I need to get this cleared up soon as I use an external harddrive and have precious files on there that i may need to access.

Please Help!

Thanks!

 

Just thought I'd add this in: the external drive works at startup, the light turns on an it appears to be on and working but then once i am past the windows screen, the light turns off and once again nothing from the USB ports is recognized.