White MacBook: Why aren't my ports working?

Question

Hey y'all, I'm using a 2006 White MacBook running on Mac OS X 10.7.5, and the USB ports aren't working. If I restart the laptop, the ports will work for a little little bit and then as soon as it finishes the reboot, they won't work. It's weird. It won't work for my iPhone 5 cable but it will work for my Mophie exernal battery case when I charge it via through USB. I plugged my iPhone 5 cable with the adapter to see if it's not working overall. However, it worked fine when I plugged it into the wall. I tried the SMC reset and the PRAM reset. Nothing is getting any better. I am trying to import pictures and this port thing is becoming very frustrating. Is there anything else I can do to fix it that doesn't require going to the apple store or something involving buying the software discs? (Incase by any chance I have to do a fresh install) Thanks all.

Answer 1

Well, dang. Things are getting a bit more complicated. If you have an expendable external drive of any type that is 16GB or larger, you can create an external recovery HDD. See: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5911. It's possible from Recovery Mode to select which startup drive to boot. If you boot to your normal startup drive from Recovery Mode and your USB ports are working correctly, it's likely indicative that key parts of OS X on your boot drive are somehow unwell and that a reinstallation is necessary.
If you have Time Machine backups of your system, I'd probably be inclined to do a full refresh of the system:
From the App Store / Purchases, download Lion again, but do not run the installer;
Download DiskMaker X from http://liondiskmaker.com/ and use it to create bootable USB install drive (requires an 8 GB USB drive) or a DVD;
Make sure the Time Machine backup is up-to-date and accessible;
Shutdown your MacBook, turn on via the power button and press/hold the Option key at the startup tone;
Choose the USB or DVD drive to boot and install Lion;
Once Lion's base install has completed, it will prompt you to continue to login or migrate a user profile from a Time Machine backup - migrate your user account(s).
That's the worst case scenario. Before you go jumping through all those hoops, however, you'd probably want to boot the system to your original install DVD to run the hardware diagnostics. If you run the short diags and nothing is found, letting the full diags run overnight might turn up a hardware problem. If so, you've got the unfortunate problem that Apple no longer supports these systems outside of California.
If full diags indicate no detectable problems and the aforementioned booting from Recovery Mode into your usual boot disk gets your USB working again, the reinstall seems to be the best bet.
Best of luck with it!