For some reason my USB sockets will work with every peripheral apart from any mouse or keyboard, help please....

Drivers? What mouse/keyboard hardware are you running? Are you attached directly to your computer or through a USB hub?

Its a wireless Microsoft 3000

It plugs and plays into my laptop but is doing nothing but saying "usb device not recognised" and "usb device malfunctioned"

They may need specific drivers, did you get any disks with the mouse and K/B?

No mate, and they plug and play on my laptop just fine.

the only software that i got was the intellipoint stuff

Have you tried a different keyboard / a different mouse. You'll need to still download and reinstall the drivers for your computer and existing operating system. I'ts likely, that while they still plug and play on your laptop, the drivers are corrupt on your desktop....

It wont "plug and play" any keyboard or mouse in to the USB sockets, it will accept my Ipod and camera and wireless receiver though....very confused...I received no USB2 drivers with the motherboard and presumed that XP would have them.

Can someone please help me out...the guys so far have been brilliant but this is really frustrating me

Its a Microsoft Wireless Desktop 3000 set....