USB 3.0 ports missing VPCF13E1E

Hi, my girlfriend has a VPCF13E1E.

Today her (only) 2 USB ports weren't working. I mean, they're really just gone. It's not a "hardware" problem, since I can plug my phone and charge it. If I plug her Waccom, or a pen drive, or a hard drive to the port, nothing happens. It's just dead. However, if I plug a mouse, it blinks once, in a split of second, but that's it.

I re-instaled the Renesas USB 3.0 drivers from the support page. I even downloaded a newer version from the intel one (just to troubleshoot it). However, no luck.

I'm running a Win7 32-bit. The Renesas  USB ports aren't even showing in the Device Manager. I've google about this, and none of the fixes work:

1- "delete the device in device mgr" - There's not device to delete
2- "check to yellow exclamation marks" - There are no exclamation marks nor Unidentified Hardware. I've ran a couple times the Search for Hardware button. Nothing.

There was a solution that worked a couple days ago (as she was experiencing the same problem). Somewhere in a forum, there was this guy advising to "Unplug the laptop, remove batery, discharge static electricty by holding the power button for half a minute". The problem is. It didn't work for me. It did work while leaving the computer unplugged/no battery the whole night. Next day morning, it started detecting the USB ports.

The thing is: Is there any better solution then the above? I don't want to have to unplug it for like 8hours to get the USB ports to work.