I have had an Acer notebook for 3 months and had my Lexmark printer hooked up. It has worked with no problems until yesterday when it says error, cannot communicate with printer. I uninstalled and attempted to reinstall, but after the point when you must connect cable, all stops because the ports arent functioning. After doing a scan I find the Windows has stopped the device because of reported problems...error code 43. So now neither of the usb ports functions. I have tried the scan and fix options without success (they fixed minimal registration issues but what money to proceed any further. If windows system stopped the ports from working, then windows should fix the issue not simply tell me what the problem is. Is this error code another money making scheme from microsoft? break your device connection system so you have to pay to fix it? This is clearly not an issue with Acer as some have suggested because it was working fine before and it states windows stopped the function. Someone at microsoft needs to tell me how to fix this issue. They want $ 50 bucks just to talk to someone-this is outrageous!

I would try taking the battery out of the laptop for 15 minutes then put it back in and see if that helps. You could also go into device manager and see if the usb ports have an exclamation point next to them. You could delete them and reboot and see if windows finds them again. You can also right click the usb ports in device manager and see if they are enabled or disabled. If they say enabled, disable them then enable again. If it says disabled then enable them.

thanks for the suggesstion. I tried your solution and it said it was working properly after disable/enable...until i tried to use the ports.Oh well

This might sound simple but have you tried another usb printer cable? Also did you delete the usb ports in device manager then reboot to have windows find them again? Should do the last suggestion with the printer not hooked to computer. Did you try removing the battery for 15 minutes then rebooting?