Did Norton 2010 corrupt my USB ports

[redshift]

I'm hoping one of you bright computer guys has some insight on this...

I have 2 Creative mp3 players, a Zen and a Zen V, both have worked flawlessly for around 2 years.

After updating my norton 2009, the players will not communicate with the respective media programs.

I have a V6000 presario that's about 4 years old. The first thing I did was uninstall both Norton and the Creative Media Source, then reinstalled just the Media Source. I get the prompt to connect the player to finish the install, and the PC will not see either of them.

However they both WILL still turn on and charge upon connecting.

Is it possible part of the Norton update took out a component from 2 separate programs, while leaving other usb devices' drivers intact? I tried 2 cameras, and a gamepad and they all work fine. I even went so far as to try to update the firmware in the zen, of course that was useless because the PC still won't recognize it.

On top of Norton I run Glary Utilities and Smart Defrag almost daily. This PC is as clean as they get.

I am miffed, I have 2 usb ports and they both are fine with other devices. I reinstalled the media programs at least 3 times, nothing.

The one very odd thing is that most times I tried connecting the Zen I got the USB connect/disconnect tones in rapid fire. Very strange.

This also occurred with all 4 cables I tried. Acted like there were intermittent bad connections, but again they worked with the other devices. I blew out the USB ports on the players with air too.

Both were working right up until the update. I still have not reinstalled Norton, because at this point I am putting the finger on that. I am bloody pissed about this...

Any help will be hugely appreciated!