Reformatting hard drive

Hello,
 
Sadly, it seems it may be time to reformat my hard drive.
 
For some unknown reason, the driver on my usb midi keyboard will not allow more than 15-20 minutes of activity before shutting down and refusing to restart.
 
This happened last year, and a system restore fixed it. Reinstalled the driver, and away I went.
 
It's a different story this time. : ( System restore does not fix the problem.  I've downloaded a free anti malware scanner which found and removed 28 items. Still, no luck. I've done system restore in Safe Mode.....and still nothing.
 
Other info: All other usb ports work fine and other devices plugged into the same port as the A500s work fine. Hotmail: I cannot for the life of me empty my junk folder. When attempting this, I get sent straight back to the inbox. This doesn't happen on other computers.
 
Other than restoring the laptop to it's factory settings and starting from scratch, I'm at a loss as to what to do.
 
Is there anything else that I can try before going back to square one?
 
If I decide to restore the laptop to factory settings, will I be required to reinstall my cakewalk programs from the respective disks, or can this be done via the program files that I put onto my external hd?
 
Will I need to re-install the plugins that I've collected over time? If so, do you recommend that I uninstall them first?
 
Thanks for your help,
 
Richard

Cheers, man.
 
I never knew that option existed.
 
Just out of curiousity, can the power for each port be individually set? I ask cos my other USB devices work fine.
 
I'll see how I get on.
 
Thanks again.

I took a look at the Root Hubs and found everything to be set up ok.
 
Thanks again.
 
Rich