windows 7 - How do I resolve the error message "USB Device Not Recognized"?

I'm getting this message, when I plugin a new USB device such as 3G modem or a mouse (into any port).

When I reboot leaving it in the same port, all works OK.

If I unplug it and plug it in again, I'm getting the same message again, the device doesn't work and Windows hangs when I try to reboot or shutdown.
I have a freshly installed Windows 7 (the same edition) on a secondary disk, and there is no such problem there.

Any ideas, how to solve this problem without a complete reinstall of the system?

Answer

I solved a similar problem. My USB system had become very ill: although existing drivers would work fine, as soon as I moved any USB device to another port or installed a new device or tried, horror, to reinstall a device, Windows would refuse with "USB device not recognized". Within a couple of hours, my system was reachable by Remote Desktop only -- no USB at all worked.

The solution in my case was:

In that previous version of the log, I looked for the string "usb.inf". This allowed me to figure out that it was originally copied into C:\Windows\inf from:

 C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\usb.inf_amd64_neutral_153b489118ee37b8

This is of course system dependent. I copied both usb.inf and usb.pnf from there to C:\Windows\inf.

That's all it took in my case.