Apple has robust USB support built-in to the system. Unlike Windows 7, OS X will not go out on the network and download missing or updated device drivers for you. Nor will it provide you a dialog that the device isn't working. It will just sit there and stare back at your frustration. Welcome to UNIX.
There is no guarantee that a device that shows up in System Information (profile) will also work as expected. If the device manufacturer has not explicitly made the USB device compatible with (current) OS X OS requirements, it may simply not work. Or worse, it will spew tons of complaints into the system log file. It may also require a kernel extension to work and that is another matter entirely.
Here are some command-line diagnostics that can be run in the Terminal.app. May or may not help you.
$ sudo dmesg | more
Look for entries that talk about USB devices including hubs.
You should also look at the system log because USB devices that are connected, but misbehaving will write volumes of entries into the system log. I just detected a bad USB hub this way. The other symptom was that my system.log file was growing rapidly past 2GB.
$ grep USB /var/log/system.log | more
Show the USB entries in the I/O kit registry
$ ioreg -b | grep USB | more