USB Keyboard no longer works

antispam246 · 26 Apr 2010 at 19:01

About 5 hours ago my pc crashed, since rebooting my usb keyboard no longer works when it reaches windows login. I'm completely lost with this and it's infuriating me.

- I'm running windows xp
- Never had this issue before with keyboard, it's always worked until 5 hours ago
- There is no fault with the keyboard, I've tried in on 2 other systems and it works fine
- There's no problems with the USB ports all other usb devices work and work on all the ports.
- The mouse as well as all other usb devices work fine
- I've uninstaqlled the keyboard several times and reinstalled with no luck

The keyboard is a generic dell one using a dell system.

- The device manager doesn't report any issues. The keyboard is listed as installed and working properly.
- The keyboard does work in BIOS just not in windows

The only way i can get into windows is to use remote desktop from another pc so i can use another systems keyboard to control this pc which is what im doing now.

Having endlessly searched for a solution, nothing has worked. There was a registry fix but it hasn't worked. One thing I thoguht may have caused it was before I had made a registry change to IRPStackSize to try to resolve a network issue. I reverted this chnage back and still no response from keyboard.

- The keyboard works fine under my win 7 installation on same pc just not win xp

- After my pc crashed I checked through my event logs but could not find anything relating to my issue.

There was a reference to a registry fix ensuring Upperfilter had only kbdclass, my does so this didn't work.

I'm really at a loss. I do not want to reinstall xp, I cant do a repair or system restore. Those are not choices for me, I won't explain why, they're just not.

I'm really astounded this has got me perplexed as usualyl an issue like this is simply resolved by replugging the usb device or rebooting. Obviously a no go.

Anyone have any ideas?

Werewolf · 26 Apr 2010 at 19:34

Boot into the bios, and change the USB keyboard support to Bios rather than OS

That should sort it for the time being, as it sounds like a driver issue in Windows, and doing that will turn control of USB keyboards over to the bios (so Windows won't need it's own USB driver for the keyboard).
Then I think there is probably an issue with the basic windows USB keyboard driver (hid something or other), possibly being either corrupted/missing/replaced with something else

antispam246 · 27 Apr 2010 at 12:23

I dont have that option in BIOS. Only options are to turn "ON" "OFF" or "NO BOOT" I cant use off as i cant get into windows xp with it off. I dont think these options are the same as what you suggested anyway.

Any other ideas?

Phage · 27 Apr 2010 at 13:32

Have you tried the other USB sockets, in case it's a damaged socket / controller ?
Do you still have the PS2 adaptor ?

antispam246 · 27 Apr 2010 at 23:02

I've tried alll other sockets, keyboard works in none of them. Other all other usb devices work in all usb slots. My pc doesn't have a ps/2 port nor do i have a ps/2 keyboard.

antispam246 · 28 Apr 2010 at 09:23

Ok,

I uninstalled all USB hubs one at a time, I then uninstalled all USB controllers one at a time. I then removed all USB devices, powered the pc off. Re-attached the mouse and keyboard only, restarted the pc. Logged into windows via remote desktop, all USB controllers were re-installed, the mouse and keyboard were re-installed. These again all showed as installed without issues in the device manager. Keyboard still didn't work in windows.

So, I booted with win xp disc to get to recovery console to try and copy over a backup system config, for some reason I can't get to the recovery console.

I'm determined to fix this without having to reinstall windows or format but I'm pretty much out of ideas.

I've checked the registry over and all the UpperClassFilters contains only kbdclass which rules out some rogue entry.

antispam246 · 30 Apr 2010 at 14:20

SOLVED. Sort of. After trying pretty much everything except reinstalling windows or formating I decided to try the lesser of 3 evils.

1) Firstly I installed the recovery console from my windows cd
2) Booted into the recovery console, chose my windows installation
3) At command prompt typed "copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config"
4) Overwrite the file

I found this solution in various places after being certain the registry was corrupted. There's many articles on it, although somewhat scary

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
http://www.pchell.com/support/recoverfromcorruptedregistry.shtml
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-xp/892740-solved-keyboard-not-working-xp.html

Just some references incase anyone needs it. I would advise reading before performing it.

Having done this, sure enough the keyboard worked. The downside?

I had to reinstall various hardware drivers and windows patches including SP3.

Although so far this has been a lot easier than resolving the original issue.

One big issue that did occur after doing this was an Error Code 39 relating to both my dvd drives. To fix this I had to delve into the registry once more and delete the filters relating to it, after a reboot this was resolved.

Reference for dvd fix http://www.instant-registry-fixes.org/how-can-i-fix-code-39-error/

Other issues included a black screen at windows login this was simple because the reinstallation of my video drivers had defaulted the monitor to my secondary monitor.

All I have left to do is reinstall my bluetooth and resolve an issue with roxio media manager constantly trying to install (which I'm hopefully about to resolve by reinstalling blackberry desktop software).

Other than that, everything is fine. SP3 was really the only windows update that was missing. As for hardware it was my graphics, bluetooth and dvd. Everything else appears to be working fine.

As a MASSIVE bonus! Applying this fix (for the keyboard issue) also fixed my system restore which has never ever worked for me. Everytime I tried to use it it said a system restore couldn't be done at this point and I had to reboot first, this simply lopped upon reboot, and now! it works! So all in all I'd say this was RESOLVED.

As for what caused it. I know the registry was corrupted and I read many articles with this issue relating to spyware software cuasing the issues. This is possible, it could have been kapersky update or more likely when I ran cccleaner I may have accidentally removed something I shouldn't have in the registry cleanup. My error was that when I was doing my registry backups I was exporting ONLY the current key I was on and not the entire registry which made my registry backups useless.