I had a problem with the USB not recognized (after the dreaded update debacle!) and being somewhat technologically challenged I uninstalled Palm Desktop and reinstalled it - that seemed to do the trick but I have absolutely no idea why it worked! I also restarted the desktop after I had uninstalled Desktop and before I reinstalled it. I think it needed to do the search for new hardware with the installation disc in. If you have another USB port you can try that and see if it recognizes the hardware.
I initially had problems with the hotsynch hanging and spent some hours on the phone to Palm helpline - I cant really remember what we did that fixed the problem but they had me doing something with the reg edit files and eventually we started from scratch with a hard reset and reinstalling the latest versions of all applications and the PIM data. It was a pain in the neck but it seems to have worked.
