Computer tech question?

Did you put the what-cha-ma-call-it in the thing-a-ma-jig?

I have no idea what a "USB hardware thing" is.

Additional: You are correct that 99% of the people would not know. The other 1% are the ones who should be answering this question, but they aren't going to see the answer either. Good technique. I'm sure that all USB devices are exactly the same....not!

I would suggest if you have the driver disk that came with the device that you plug the device into your netbook and and go to the device manager, you can get there by right clicking on my computer selecting properties the box that appears you will then have a hardware tab, press this then press device manager, do you see a yellow question mark? If you do right click then select update driver and browse to the driver disk and install the driver.

If that doesn't work try downloading the latest driver from the manufactures website and follow the above steps again this time browse to the downloaded driver.

well for the 1% of us that might know what it is it would be helpful if you could elaborate at least a little bit. A printer could be described as a USB hardware device as it connects via USB, not technically correct but hardware is a generic term.

Do you mean a USB port hub? Chances are the issue is related to the netbooks, they are typically low power devices and perhaps tghe connection of the USB hardware "thing" simply means there is insufficient power to go round, so the device remains unpowered.