keyboard and mouse stop responding

jnas · January 21st, 2004, 01:16 PM

I have A computer with an intel Mobo that does not have PS2 ports for keyboard or mouse. does have 4 usb ports. The problem is that keyboard and mouse both work until about halfway through boot up then neither will work. The operating system is windows 98 and the keyboard and mouse are both microsoft.

John Prophet · January 21st, 2004, 01:36 PM

have you tried it on different ports? Seems I remember a gateway where the keyboard worked on the front port but not the rear.

jnas · January 21st, 2004, 01:42 PM

I tried it every way possible. Its almost as if the os is disabling usb support or something. I can sit there and watch the light on the keyboard and about halfway through boot up the light goes out

jnas · January 21st, 2004, 01:50 PM

to give a little history. I received two comuters with identical hardware. These are a barbie and a hotwheels computer if your familiar. Neither would power on at all but I found the batteries on the motherboard was bad from sitting for a long time. One computer boots and operates find but this one is a problem.

Omardeth · January 21st, 2004, 01:55 PM

did you check the bios to make sure that usb keyboard and mouse are inabled ? some have this .

John Prophet · January 21st, 2004, 01:59 PM

they call it "legacy usb support" or something similar

jnas · January 21st, 2004, 06:54 PM

There's not a selection in the bios for legacy support but on the first screen it says legacy support enabled.

jnas · January 22nd, 2004, 01:07 AM

Update: I booted into safe mode and the mouse and keyboard still continues to work so is there a way to check on the usb support in windows?

Peter M · January 22nd, 2004, 02:41 PM

The problem is with Windows 98, first edition.
During boot, BIOS owns the USB controllers and lets you use keyboard and mouse as if they were on legacy PS/2 ports. The booting operating system, at some point, takes it over and plants its own USB drivers onto the controller, running the USB devices natively furtheron.

Now, W98FE is stupid enough to do the takeover manoeuvre (ending BIOS USB keyboard support) BEFORE the login screen, but - you guessed it - not loading its own USB drivers until AFTER the login screen. Thus, you're stuck on the login screen with no means of getting past it.

The Second Edition fixes that, and plenty of other similar situations.

jnas · January 22nd, 2004, 10:49 PM

Thanks for the information but how do I fix it