USB Empty

Hi,
I'm using Parallels 3.0 Build 5608 on an Intel Mac Mini (1,6GHZ, 2 GB RAM, Tiger 10.4.11) with Win XP Home SP2 as guest and have a rather strange problem. All of a sudden I can't connect to any USB Device within the guest system. I tried "connect to guest" and "ask me what to do" in the VM settings but nothing worked. The USB drive shows on the Mac desktop but not in the VM. When I click on the USB Symbol in the bottom panel it just says "Empty". When I try USB in the Devices-Menu, nothing happens. No USB devices are listed, neither the usb mouse or keyboard (which were allways listed before) nor the Flashpen or external HD I just tried to connect...
I realized this problem just yesterday as I haven't used the Mini very often the last few month. At this point I had 5580 installed and upgraded from there to 5600 and then to 5608 to see if the problem went away. I also uninstalled Parallels completley and reinstalled it. But it's no use. Still USB says empty. Even tried a Linux System Live CD to see if the USB problem relates specifically to my Windows guest but it's the same prblem in the Linux VM. No USB!

I searched for hours in the forum and in google and can't find a hint about such a problem.

Can someone help please :-(

 

Problem solved

So... I solved the USB problem.
I just created a VM in VirtualBox to see if my USB problem was restricted only to Parallels Desktop. When I tried to activate the USB support in VBox I got this error message: "Could not load the Host USB Proxy service (VERR_GENERAL_FAILURE)".
So it seemed that something was wrong with the USB settings of my Mac OS. I remembered that I had installed the 10.4.11 Delta update a few days ago. Maybe that f*cked up something. I reinstalled the 10.4.11 Combo update... and voila: the Parallels USB support works again! Dito for VBox...