[LKE]

Hello All!

Profuse apologies if this question has already been asked and I missed it when searching - however any help, or links to previously given help would be hugely appreciated!

Yesterday evening I was idly surfing and clicked to watch a news video. My computer froze instantly and totally, I had to hit the restart button on the case.

It took 6 restarts or thereabouts for things to settle and XP to boot up to Windows(including the machine doing scan disk a couple of times) and that seemed to sort it out...

Except that neither keyboard nor mouse would work, and there wasn't even a mouse pointer on the screen!

I shut down, changed my microsoft wireless kb and mouse for ps2 ones and restarted. The mouse pointer reappeared, I went into safe mode and system restored back to last Friday (although it said there were no changes), and things improved a little...

Now the mouse works, but kb still doesn't (still the ps2 ones). The mouse then freezes when I strike a key, and it's back to the restart button on the case.

I've looked in control panel>keyboards. Under device status it says "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing (code 39)"
Tried to load latest driver version - it says it can't improve on the one it's already got.

Looked at device manager - the keyboard has a yellow asterisk on it, so the machine knows something's not right.

And incidentally, I noticed that all my USB controllers are also yellow asterisked and not working!

As far as I can tell everything else works (eg: I popped an audio CD in and started and played fine).

Any advice (hopefully a quick fix? :-) that anyone can give a layman will be very gratefully received!

Thanks in advance, LKE

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Howdy and welcome to G2G:

Go back into Device Manager and delete the keyboard.. Reboot and let XP find it again!!

Murray

[Murray S.]

Howdy and welcome to G2G:

Go back into Device Manager and delete the keyboard.. Reboot and let XP find it again!!

Murray

[LKE]

Many thanks for that Murray!

Will try it when I get home and post result in a couple of hours if it works - or in about 24 hours, when I'm back at work tomorrow if it doesn't!

"And incidentally, I noticed that all my USB controllers are also yellow asterisked and not working!"

In passing, do you think the same proceedure would would work for this, a less urgent (at the moment, until my camera runs out of space!) problem?

Thanks again, LKE

[Murray S.]

Make sure USB is enabled in BIOS.. If they are, then you will need to load the drivers for the USB..

They will either be on systemboard driver cd or on the manufacturers website..

Murray

[LKE]

Hi, thanks for the USB tip!

However, I seem to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater with the first part of my problem!

I went back to Device Manager, and found the keyboard. I couldn't find 'Delete' per se, only 'Uninstall'. So I did that, and the keyboard worked immediately. Hurrah, I thought!

However, the mouse stopped working again at the same time. Using keyboard shortcuts I made my way back to Device Manager, checked the drivers - both mouse and kb were working normally, so I decided a restart would probably settle things down once and for all.

Did that, and can't get back into Windows at all! The machine says \config\system32 file is damaged and to use the original XP disk to do the repair.

At that point, I decided for the sake of my blood pressure (not to mention the health and safety of my immediate family!) to call it a day!

So next plan - go to the off licence, invest in a good bottle of red (strictly medicinal, to assist in keeping bp down!). Then wait until family are safely in bed, make a start on the medicine.... and then attempt the repair overnight this weekend!

Will post results on Monday, earlier if I'm successful!

Thanks again, LKE

[Retired Tech]

One of the options here is Windows Installation CD to repair the current installation which say will leave the data intact

http://www.theelderg..._windows_xp.htm

Another option is here

http://support.micro...kb;en-us;307545

Edited by Keith, 10 June 2005 - 03:24 AM.