Windows 7 Multiple USB Device Failures Across PCs

I have been building my own PCs for 20 years. Just upgraded my main home office PC to Win7 64 bit a few months ago - no major issues until now. About 2 weeks ago, I noticed my Magic Jack USB dongle was dead. No blue light, no nothing, just a brick. The weird part is that I first plugged it into my wifes PC (also a win7 desktop) and also a win7 laptop sitting in my office room. Same behavior. No reaction at all, windows didnt make a peep (it should have launched the magic jack installer, which is built into the dongle) and no blue light.

OK, so fine, stuff does "fry" once in a while. So I wait for the dongle replacement. When it arrives, I plug it in. Silence. I try it on the other machines. NADA. NO REACTION, just like the first one. I try their support chat again. They finally after 4 hours of doing the same things over and over again gave me essentially the boot by telling me to unplug the router (which of course meant that I had to end the chat). Of course, no improvement. As unlikely a sit would seem, I somehow had two dead magic jack dongles, one of them brand new. That to me was borderline impossible. But wait it gets worse.

I then notice that ONE of the 2 external HDDs I have is dead as well. But all of them still works fine. Also, a couple other USB devices work fine still. and of course I have tried every permutation of USB port and hub or not and try all the ports and on and on. So again, I have a situation where SOME of my USB devices dont work (so far 2 magic jack dongles and an HDD). No power, they are not detected at all by win 7. And this is on 4 PCs in the home. All win7. But how could 3 devices fail for no reason at once?

Finally, I also then noticed when trying to do a skype call that my logitech webcam is dead. Same behavior, and it had been working fine. Without even thinking, I order a new webcam. I am now up to 4 "dead" USB devices, and remember these are all "dead" and have the same completely lifeless behavior on all 4 home PCs (all are win 7, 2 desktops, 2 laptops), and again all of the PCs do have working USB devices attached also, so it isnt a complete USB failure. The final straw was today when the new webcam came (a MS lifecam-500). I ran the software and plugged in the cam wehn it told me to and voila - said I didnt have a camera attached. Again, tried it on my other PCs - same thing.

Now I know something is wrong beyond the devices, because the odds that 5 devices all failed all of a sudden (2 of them brand new out of the box) is beyond measure. So I have been on the forums for about 8 hours now trying every variant of deleting/reinstalling USB drivers, because win 7 and drivers are all that I think these issues have in common, they all exhibit the same behavior on the same OS (on multiple machines). I have seen several other post the same issue, but many seem to be able to resolve it via a hard power cycle with removal of power cord/battery. I have tried all of this of course, no joy.