I have this flash card reader -- and it has passed on I think. It is internal and plugged into my USB 2.0 port on the motherboard (Giga Byte K7 Triton). None of its LED's turn on even before Windows boots and they used to provided I had a card in the drive. This happened to me before about 6 months ago, the same type of thing -- the USB 2 port does work and I don't know for sure that the drive is dead (ie I haven't tested it on other computers). But does anyone have any speculation as to why this may be happening?

Look at the Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus controllers and see if your device shows up at all. It will either show up under its brand name or "USB Mass Storage Device". If it doesn't show up, it may be dead. If it does show up, there is a troubleshooter that will help you diagnose any problems.

Also, take a look at the USBVIEW program from the Windows Platform SDK (http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/default.htm). USBVIEW will show you everything that Windows knows about a USB device, if it is able to communicate with it.

Two sites with good info on USB troubleshooting are:
http://www.butterflymedia.com/TechSupport.asp and http://www.vpedal.com/faq_usb2.htm