But the restore point that resulted in success was no longer available.

Cool, i'll just do another system restore. 10.1.1.8 (as my HP Support Assistant software was suggesting I do), and everything went back to not functioning. My USB ports were back to operable, and the Device Manager showed a Universal Serial Bus Controllers tree with 7 items under it! I then installed the Intel Chipset Installation and Driver Utility v. So, for the heck of it, I tried another system restore, and OMG! it worked.

Then I noted the computer had set an earlier restore point when a critical update was installed. I did a system restore to when everything was working fine, to no avail. Instead, under Other devices, I get USB xHCI Compliant Host Controller with the exclamation point. In Device Manager, there is no longer the Universal Serial Bus Controllers tree. I thought it was a battery issue, but it ended up being a driver issue. I was working on my computer, and all of a sudden the wireless mouse stopped working.

Via usb extensible host controller 43