USB Keyboard Mouse Not Working...

Hockeyguyinoc

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Jan 9, 2009
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A friend of mine dropped off a computer for me to look at complaining that it is slow. It is a Dell Dimension E310 running XP Media Center. Not sure of the service pack. I plug in a keyboard and mouse that appear to work in the bios. When windows loads it detects them correctly saying found new hardware but then it pops up with the let windows find a driver this time all the time etc. I cannot select anything because neither the keyboard or mouse work. I've tried safe mode and that does not work. I've tried about 3 mice and 3 keyboards. The unit only has USB ports no ps2 ports. I've read online to get the Windows disc and do a repair but was under the impression I would need to know what service pack was installed to do that and of course have the corresponding disc to match.

Any help would be much appreciated.
 

Hockeyguyinoc

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So far nothing is working. The mouse and keyboard are working up until windows starts starts the loading screen then caps lock stays lit and the keyboard and mouse do not respond anymore it recognizes the devices by name but won't load.

I've tried safe mode but same thing never goes.

Any other ideas I've tried to remote in but they do not have a password on the accounts so they won't remote in.
 

Hockeyguyinoc

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More work than it was worth but I figured out how to do it. I took the hard drive out put it in this computer and was able to download and install drivers for keyboard and mouse through remote desktop.

I used regedit to edit the registry on the second drive. I enabled remote desktop and logging without a password.

I used this to edit the registry on the secondary drive:
From Command Prompt Regedit
Highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
File-Load Hive-Windows\System32\Config of the drive you added. Select the appropriate Hive (System, Software, Security etc.).
Name the hive anything you will remember "LoadedHiveSystem". It will show up under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Once you are done hightlight "LoadedHiveSystem" Go to File, Unload Hive.

To turn on RDP:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server
fDenyTSConnections
Edit DWORD Value box, in Value data, type 0, and then click OK.

To Allow Blank Passwords:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Lsa
LimitBlankPasswordUse
Edit DWORD Value box, in Value data, type 0, and then click OK.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
LimitBlankPasswordUse
Edit DWORD Value box, in Value data, type 0, and then click OK.

On the hard drive CurrentControlSet was not in use due to not being the loaded OS but I had ControlSet001 and ControlSet003.

After you are done I suggest you at least turn off remote logging without a password.

I hope this helps anyone looking at the same/similar issue I had. As always use at your own risk regedit can make your system unbootable. In this case the system wasn't useable so it was worth it to help a friend.