Hey brbo,
Thanks for the reply.
I spent the entire day troubleshooting this with Apple Technicians/Support, to no resolution. (All the cookie cutter suggestions were exhausted).
Full disclosure, I am no expert on Apple products (no manufacturer's to be honest). However, I have a degree in Computer Science and a Masters degree (Innovation, Manufacturing Management and Entrepreneurship), so I know a little bit about research and investigating problems. So I wasted an entire day trying to get to the bottom of the issue, and I believe I have.
I was advised by the technicians to reinstall the operating system, which was done twice to no avail. Once the reinstalls brought no resolution, it is obvious that the problem is either the physical hardware or firmware related.
To cut a long story short, I extracted the hard drive and did some research and wiped it. The original default operating system once reinstalled, was then able to immediately detect, engage in corrective action, and relay a useful message to me as a user, pin pointing the issue with the USB ports. This is something that the current MacOS system, after two reinstalls, was never able to do. (And I do not fault the system - that is by design).
What then is the value of the latest OS if it can 'fail' at something so trivial? Where is promise of improvement?
On this ten year old OS, now a single USB port works fine, and I am 100% sure what is wrong with the other, and I can actually use the MBP. However it cannot be udated due to the App Store blocking access to the current version of the operating system. Lol. Naturally, since the next step was to re-update it to see if the problem re-occurred, which I will do as soon as I figure out how to update the system. (This is the researcher in me :-) )
Thanks for the reply though.
Take care !