Hotplug devices, Firewire and USB, don't react, newbish question

[Dragan Espenschied]

Hi,

i have a new Warty installation on Intel (did it from an USB cdrom drive). 
Everything runs fine, but i cannot connect any USB or Firewire device at all.

In Gnome's device manager i can see the tree of USB devices, but no 
connected end hardware. If i plug in a mouse it will not even light up.

Connected should be: USB cdrom (from which the installation worked 
flawlessly), HD floppy, HP printer, and a firewire harddisk.

I don't know if it has anything to do with that, but during booting the 
message

   PCI cannot allocate region 4 of device 0000:00:02.1

Could this be my not working USB controller?

Also, i have a Soundblaster Audigy ZS built in, which has its own firewire 
port. This port shows up in Gnome's device browser as well, but is the 
same useless as the ones on the mainboard.

I would be very grateful for a hint on where to start looking for a solution.

Thanks!
drx