Keyboard and Mouse won't work at Vista login screen

Odd problem.

I would take the HDD out of your notebook and hook it up to your desktop, save your files, then repair/reinstall windows.

I have an ACER Aspire 3050 laptop and had the same problem with the touchpad and keyboard.
I know this may seem simplified...but before you run through all the issues/processes offered to help your keyboard/mouse react again, try charging the battery for a night or two.
The laptop did not work at full function right away (after the first night of charging) but did show some signs of improvement, like some aspects of the keyboard reacting.
I had not used my laptop in a while due to a programming issue. By the time I had it fixed, the battery went dead. If the keyboard works without the battery in, after you finish working on the laptop, try keeping the laptop powered on with the battery in it when you are away or asleep.
This will very likely charge the battery again and restore function to your keyboard.
I am using the laptop keyboard to write this with what I originally thought was a corrupt battery, now functioning just fine.
Remember, I noticed the night before that some keystrokes were showing, where there was no reaction before. The battery took more than one night to be up at full power...but it is fine now.
I saved myself more than $40.00 by not purchasing a replacement. Hope this helps.

I had the same issue, and most of the info I found online wasn't much help (with the exception of Shabaa's post above).

I did however find a solution myself. Maybe this will help someone else.

After Windows update from last night, my Acer Aspire 5515 (Windows Vista 32bit) wasn't recognizing my keyboard or my touchpad mouse. It would however recognize a USB mouse (and I assume a USB keyboard, although I just used the on-screen keyboard through the "Ease of Access" center).

In viewing the device manager, I saw that it was showing a driver error for both my processor and my sound card. I also noticed that neither the keyboard nor the touchpad were even listed in the device manager. My computer simply wasn't recognizing them, despite the drivers being installed (I found the drivers online and verified that they were already there).

For some reason, reinstalling the drivers for my sound controller and my processor fixed the issue with the keyboard. I had to go to Acer's site (http://www.acerpanam.com) and download the appropriate driver for the touchpad. After a quick reboot, all was well again.

Hello

I encountered the same problem under win XP and also tryed to recover the battery but the problem is a bad battery and the Api for controlling the battery condition
When you disable the Api in Hardware -> Batterycontrol you can start up again on mainpower
If you want to enable it again you have to replace the battery for a new one.
Most likely that this will solve your problem

hi, i just had that problem with my brand new acer also..and took it back and got new one thinking it would solve my problem... but if u can get an external keyboard and mouse..preferebly usb..u can still get into your computer and pull your saved work out. I have done this myself.

I have an acer aspire 5515 running windows vista. The laptop is a whopping 6 months old, and I never had any indication that the battery might be going out, or that anything at all was wrong with it. Just woke up yesterday morning and tried to use it, and the touchpad and keyboard wouldn't respond at all.

I used a usb mouse, and the on screen keyboard to log in to the laptop to kind of poke around to see what could be causing the problem, when lo and behold, in the device manager, six or seven devices had little exclamations next to them. Every single item said "Windows cannot initialize the device driver for this hardware. (Code 37)."

I had windows vista try to update the drivers, thinking that for whatever reason, they had gone bad.
Nothing.
I tried disabling them, and reenabling them.
Nothing.
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the devices.
Nothing.

Finally, I struck upon the idea that maybe a recent system update had bumfuzzled my machine. So I did a system restore to just before the system update that my laptop recieved the night before.

......

......

It WORKS!