USB Keyboard no longer works

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antispam246

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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 uninstalled 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 thought may have caused it was before I had made a registry change to IRPStackSize to try to resolve a network issue. I reverted this change 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, mine does so this didn't work.

I'm really at a loss. I do not want to reinstall xp, I can't 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 usually an issue like this is simply resolved by replugging the usb device or rebooting. Obviously a no go.

Anyone have any ideas?
 
Saga Lout

Saga Lout

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Could a hot key be guilty of causing all this chaos?


 
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antispam246

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It's not a hotkey, I don't think. I checked keyboard settings and nothing like sticky keys is enabled.

I've uninstalled every usb root hub with no effect. I found the one specifically for my keyboard and reinstalled, restarted with no change.

I also dont have BIOS option of disabling/enabling USB legacy support.
 
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antispam246

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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.
 
Saga Lout

Saga Lout

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It's really odd because it works in the same PC on a different OS. What shows up under the Hardware tab in Control Panel>Keyboard?

 
Saga Lout

Saga Lout

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It would be interesting if another Dell owner posted what showed up in theirs because I would have preferred to see the Dell keyboard actually named. It isn't unusual for Dells to refuse to see any keyboard other than their own and your system doesn't think it can see it. What does the equivalent entry say in the W7 installation?

 
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antispam246

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Having researched alot now, I've noticed similar issues posted that concerned dell systems myself. but none with a definitive solution.

I'll check in win 7 and se what it says.

I've also done a complete virus scan, malware, spyware etc.. and nothing there.
 
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antispam246

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ok in windows 7

Under HID it's listed as "USB Input Device" which is different from XP which is "HID Keyboard Device"

Under Keyboard they're both listed as HID Keyboard Device.
 
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antispam246

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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 alot 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.
 
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