What could be causing my laptop usb ports to not work?

ive had my laptop for about 8 months now so its still new. its a toshiba satellite i3 core intel. i do my best to keep it in perfect condition. ive never dropped it or bumped into anything and i use it a lot. i was trying to plug my ipod in to download some stuff off of itunes but it wasn't showing my ipod was plugged in so i tried the second port. it still was not working so i figured it was the cord. then i wanted to print something. i plugged to printer adapter into my laptop and it wasn't working again i tried in both ports it still wasn't working. anyways i did this a couple times with different things and i now know it has to be my usb ports but they have worked before im not sure why they aren't working now. could it just be my laptop or something i did? im not sure how to go about going to get it fixed so if you can tell me what i should do that would be great :)