usb mouse and usb keyboard -- unable to add

**tobevers** · July 30th, 2004, 03:32 PM

Hello all,
I have a customer's computer in our shop. It is a Compaq Presario EZ2200 with Win98SE. It has no PS/2 ports and every peripheral runs off USB. I have only the tower here (no recovery cd's, etc...). With that info, here is my problem. I set up the tower using my own usb keyboard and usb mouse. When I boot to windows, it finds the devices and brings up the add new hardware wizard to add the usb keyboard and usb mouse and I must click "next" to continue. At this point I am stuck as I of course have no way of continuing because the mouse and keyboard do not work yet. The usb keyboard will work in safe mode but the usb mouse will not. I am about 120 miles from the client and hope to resolve this without getting the oem usb keyboard and mouse from them I have searched in vain for info on MS knowledge base and have tried contacting the compaq chat support folks who told me to boot to safe mode, remove all usb devices from device manager. They then want me to reboot and download new chipset drivers. I cannot do this either because windows still needs me to run through the add hardware wiz to install the keyboard/mouse. He then told me to download the patch in safe mode. I told him I obviously couldn't as you cannot access net connections in safe mode. He then told me to burn the chipset drivers to a cd and install them in safe mode. You see where I'm going with this. I somehow got ahold of the dumbest technician at Compaq and possibly on Earth. So now I'm turning to all of you. You are always my last resort in a problem like this and should probably be the first.
As always, any and all help/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

**NooNoo** · July 30th, 2004, 04:11 PM

Keyboard shortcuts and enable dos /legacy support for usb in bios.

**tobevers** · July 30th, 2004, 04:23 PM

thanks NooNoo, but legacy support is enabled in bios... I'm able to use the usb keyboard in DOS and safe mode. Also, the customer's usb mouse and usb keyboard worked fine. It's when it is trying to find the new usb keyboard and usb mouse in windows (normal mode, not safe mode) that's causing the problem. I'm thinking there's a way to get win 98 to silent install the usb mouse and usb keyboard when it adds them, but cannot find info on how to do this

**NooNoo** · July 30th, 2004, 04:31 PM

that would depend on the driver used... but if the keyboard works then hitting the enter key should get you through the setup since the next button is in focus.

You do know you can have more than one keyboard and mouse installed under usb? Use one to install the other

**tobevers** · July 30th, 2004, 04:43 PM

I think I'm not explaining the situation very well...
the keyboard will only work in safe mode and the add new hardware wizard only appears in normal mode. The mouse will not work in normal or safe mode. I cannot run through the add hardware wizard in normal mode because neither the usb keyboard nor the usb mouse will work in normal mode, hence stopping me from being able to click on or enter through on the "next" button. I would have to get at least one usb keyboard or usb mouse working (while in normal mode) to add any other ones. Therein lies my problem.

**NooNoo** · July 30th, 2004, 04:53 PM

aaah! ummmm
yeah
......

get the original keyboard?

*NooNoo ducks and runs.....

**tobevers** · July 30th, 2004, 04:58 PM

Somehow I knew it was going to boil down to that.....
There's got to be another way, short of re-running win setup, that is.

**NooNoo** · July 30th, 2004, 05:05 PM

well a quick install over would solve the problem....it won't hurt anything - especially if you ghost or backup the drive first!

**tobevers** · July 30th, 2004, 05:15 PM

I suppose, but... I'm bound to run into this problem again in the future and I'd like to know how to sidestep it. I suppose now we'll need to start asking people if they're using a non-ps/2 keyboard/mouse combo before they bring in their machines.
Oh well. For now I guess re-running setup is my only option. Thanks for the suggestions, though.

**NooNoo** · July 30th, 2004, 05:18 PM

check inside the case... see if the ps2 port is blanked off.

Put an i/o card in with a serial port and attach a true serial mouse.

**tobevers** · July 30th, 2004, 05:37 PM

I tried that (I found that post as well

). The serial card I have has it's own drivers and will not work with Win 98's native serial port drivers. I may yet try and find a serial card that will load with MS native drivers (to help with future occurrences of this problem), but for now I think I'll just rerun setup and call it a day.

This system doesn't have any ps/2 ports blanked off on the board, unfortunately. I truly hope that usb-only systems are not the wave of the future. Unless they become true legacy devices.