Keyboard/Mouse not responding

[Wayward Clam]

Got a machine here with some issues, and I know nothing about WinXP yet. I'd really appreciate a hand if anybody has any intuitions...

Problem:

When you boot it to the desktop, the keyboard and mouse stop working. The customer has no idea why this started happening; they claim to have done nothing special to the computer, no new hardware or software.

Points:

-Athlon 1400, 256 MB, 30 GB HD, WinXP Pro upgraded from Win98SE (FAT32 file system).

-Kbd and mouse work fine in BIOS, DOS from floppy, Troubleshooter, and the bootup menu. They stop working in the WinXP equivalent to the scandisk screen.

-The computer is not frozen; it still responds to new CDs in the drive; USB equipment being unplugged or plugged in, etc.

-Reverting to Last Known Good configuration does no good.

-messing with BIOS USB and PS2 settings, and replacing kbd and mouse with PS2 and/or serial versions, does not solve the problem.

-attempting to boot to Safe Mode results in a hung computer with a screen full of lines like the following:
"multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\SYSTE M32\DRIVERS\PCI.SYS" and the kbd/mouse are disabled (no Ctrl-Alt-Del)

-attempting to boot to Debugging Mode results in a hung computer with a black screen and kbd/mouse disabled.

-Scandisk from a boot disk found several damaged files and fixed them, and indicated that the size of the hard disk and some of the files was being misreported, and fixed that too.

I am currently running a Disk Surface Scan on the machine from a boot disk, but it looks like it will take 3+ hours.

Does anybody have any suggestions? Is this just screwy system files, do you think, and how do I fix it when I can't do a damn thing within Windows?

[crazyman]

?? maybe this would help.

or maybe an issue with the video card ? is it a PCI video card?

i'm no xp expert,i'm just trying to help.

or here

[LagMonster]

I think recently.. microsoft did a USB update.. i wonder if they got a corrupted download or something during auto update?..

I don't know what else it would be..

isn't their a repair option on the XP CD?

[Wayward Clam]

Unfortunately, that looks like it does help... *sigh*

Now I get to upgrade their BIOS and Intellitype program.

I will just have to confirm with them first that they never had WinXP working properly... a detail they never told me about...

[crazyman]

look here too

[Wayward Clam]

Thanks for that tip also, LagMonster, I will check into it, but I think Crazyman has it right this time; they had USB keyboards and mice plugged in through USB to PS2 adaptors, which must be what triggered the problem.

[Wayward Clam]

Wow, thanks, Crazyman, you da d00d!

[eedmond]

Hi, I just got this problem. Only thing that happened was I bought a Microsoft Optical Trackball mouse and installed it (with the PS/2 adapter) and used the cd to install the drivers (4.12). After I rebooted both the keyboard and mouse stopped working so I went to my second computer and looked up the articles posted above (the ones that work) and tried that. Still does not work while plugged into the PS/2 ports. I really don't want to put both my mouse and keyboard into my USB ports.

Specs:
Asus A7N8XPCB2.0
GF4TI4800
Promise Fastrack S150 Tx2Plus
Maxtor SATA 150 HD (160GB)
1GB Ram
Athlon XP 2400
Generic Natural Keyboard
Microsoft Optical Trackball

Both work fine in the bios, just nothing in Windows. Not even in safe mode. Have tried repeatedly to uninstall both keyboard and mouse and reinstall but with no success.

Thanks,
Eric

[confus-ed]

Bios update required then from Asus ....

[eedmond]

Bios update required then from Asus ....

I have the lates and greatest and check weekly. My previous mouse was a Logitech Trackball that was a USB plugged into a converter as well and it worked fine on this board for 6 months and my previous board for 1.5years.

-Eric

[eedmond]

Problem resolved. Reformatted HD and dumped the MS mouse and put my old one back in.

-Eric

[confus-ed]

Problem resolved. Reformatted HD and dumped the MS mouse and put my old one back in.

-Eric

Is this the same machine as in the other topic ? Snap crackle pop ?

[eedmond]

Yes, but the snap crackle pop issue predated this one. For some reason the Microsoft Intellimouse software disabled my PS/2 ports. Microsoft said to either upgrade the bios which is already at the newest or download and install more of their cruddy software. I tried the software route and it didn't fix it. Between the sound issue and this one I figured might as well reformat.

Got my old mouse and keyboard back on my system with no problems now.

-Eric