Usb pen drives

HI.
I have recently upgraded my old compaq nx6325 lappy from windows 7 to windows 8. (clean install)
It no longer recognises most flash drives. I have tried a few kingston flash drives of different sizes, an integral 512mb, & a peak 8gig. - - - These drives worked fine on this pc when it was running windows 7. - - There are no problems with any of these drives as they run ok on other computers.
The only drive recognised is the peak.
All the usb ports on the lappy are giving this problem.
The peak flash drive & my mouse work fine in all ports.
All the drives are recognised using linux.
I have uninstalled/reinstalled all the usb ports in device manager.
I have the latest bios installed.
No hp drivers are available for this pc for windows 8, but everything was recognised on installation apart from the card reader, the video card & the sm bus. These were installed using vista drivers.

BTW: these drives work ok on another pc running windows 8 :confused:


How can I get this lappy to recognise all flash drives (again) ?

Thanks for any replies.

This is the error given: The last usb device you connected to this computer malfunctioned & windows did not recognise it.

Rob