vista home premium no usb printer ports listed

Printers won't install on my Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Premium. I've read a hundred blogs like this -- all with no good solution. You can install software or add printer under printers in control panel (I've tried a Konica Minolta and a HP). The usb port is not recognized for printers. Other things will work on them. If you go into printers in control panel and try to select a usb port, none are listed. You have lpt ports and com ports (and Vista will make a File port when you install the minolta) none of which will print. As many blogs as I've read --- you'd think Windows would have fixed this problem in Service Pack one...hmmm. I'm thinking at this point if I don't get it fixed of trying to start a class action against Microsoft for not providing a fix. A couple people flashed their bios (it worked for one person --not the rest of us) and one guy talked about autoprint being disabled. Another talked about the win system32 driverStore file repository having two folders named usbstor.inf with different sets of numers. Anyone have an idea?