Help: All USB Ports Disabled Including Keyboard & Mouse

[Williams]

My only defense is I didn't cause this one. My daughter managed to either uninstall or disable ALL the USB ports on her Dell running Windows XP, so that even the mouse and keyboard won't work.

On restart, the computer is stuck trying to run the found new hardware wizard, but it doesn't matter because I can't do anything w/o mouse or keyboard. There are no PS2 connectors on this computer.

I think I'm mostly looking for an encouraging word, that when I bring this in for repair, a techie will be able to bypass the USB's, connect a keyboard and mouse and turn the USB ports back on.

We have drivers and utilities cd roms that came with the computer but I doubt putting them in the drive will automatically repair the USB ports, I'm sure you have to click through optyions and w/o keyboard and mouse I am powerless to do that.

There is also a recovery cd but I dont want to start the computer from scratch and lose all data over this if that can be avoided.

So I am at your mercy, if any is available.

[beebuster2000]

get a MAC

[antiRepublicrat]

When you’re in the BIOS try disabling all the USB ports and booting Windows. Then restart and re-enable all the USB ports in BIOS and let Windows load again. Windows seeing what it thinks is all new devices might get it to auto-load the keyboard/mouse drivers. Remember that if you only manage to get keyboard you can use Windows through tab, alt-tab, ctrl-tab, arrows and space bar.

[Wyatt's Torch]

Happened to me once. Shut down the PC and then unplug the power cord from the back of the computer. When it is shut down but still plugged in it still maintains some power and won’t reset. Plug it back in and reboot. That should work.

[antiRepublicrat]

Caveat: Remember not to change the option for recognizing a USB keyboard on boot, otherwise BIOS might not see it.

[Williams]

Thanks again but I've tried a lot of options and have made little progress. I've powered off completely (unplugged) many times but get the same result.

I've gone into boot mode and safe mode and I believe Bios mode many times. I can use the mouse/keyboard in boot and bios, but none of the options there let me reset or reinstall the usb drivers.

I have turned the usb controller off and on again following restarts but no change. Question - is what my Dell calls "set up" my BIOS? It seems it is, and unfortunately there is no option there to get to device manager or anywhere else.

Starting in safe mode I get to the screen with the icons for administrator or individual user name, but at that point no mouse/keyboard and I am dead in the water.

The diagnostics in boot mode say the 5 usb ports are fine, except one port has an over current reading. I have read that can mean a short, but then how can they work in bios and boot?

Unfortunately, I have no serial port I bought a usb/serial adapter but it can't be used.

Thanks to everyone for trying to help, sorry for all the info, I have a last question.

Can I attach and boot the problem hard drive from this machine and change settings or reinstall drivers? This machine has mouse/keyboard in PS2 ports so even if the hard drive turns off the USB's I should be able to function. Thanks again everyone!

[JerseyHighlander]

option 1: (assuming you have windows xp SP2)

on a pc with a cd burner and cd burn, download this:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
burn the cd,
take cd and pplace it in broken pc,
boot from cd
go to NTFS Tools -> Active NTFS Reader for DOS
you can now view your hard drive. change directory to c:\windows\system32\drivers

you are looking for these files to make sure they are still on the hard drive:

usbcamd.sys
usbcamd2.sys
usb8023.sys
usbd.sys
usbehci.sys
usbhub.sys
usbohci.sys
usbport.sys

If they are there everything is good.
If not, post back here.

---

option 2
(This post is making the assumption that your problem pc has system restore turned on before the USB problem started)
(the idea of this post is to do a system restore of just your registry where your hardware config is located)

Take your DEll Windows XP SP2 CD and put it in the drive.
reset the pc
when it asks to boot from CD, select yes.

Read the directions from these links VERY carefully. You will be restoring your System registry from the system restore point on your hard drive:

How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545

http://www.housing.hawaii.edu/resources/support/restore-point.htm

[JerseyHighlander]

Yes, you can transfer the physical hard drive to the other machine, you will have to go through the entire new hardware found installation for each device on yoour working pc. It will reinstall the USB drivers though. Make sure you plug in usb keyboard and mouse in the working pc before you boot the broken’s pc’s hard drive in the working pc.

Try to boot from safe mode first.

This will work, but you will have to take additional steps later to uninstall drivers for hardware only in your working pc, when the hard drive is back in the broken and then fixed pc.

[Williams]

Needless to say, you have a wealth of knowledge which I greatly appreciate your sharing. I’m going to try each option.

[Williams]

On option one, the link seems to be to a linux version download, then there is a link to a windows version project, but I’m not sure that download exists yet, can you clarify that one? Thanks again.

[JerseyHighlander]

ultimatebootcd is a linux based utility program, it’s a user interface that resides completely in the RAM when you use it.

You aren’t installing anything to your hard drive when you use ultimatebootcd, you are simply using your RAM as a temporary drive to perform some system maintenance.

[Williams]

Gotcha, thanks again I will do the download.

[Williams]

Hi, well its been a long and eventful night/morning.

I couldnt get the computer to boot up from the ubcd so I moved on to option 2

I followed the directions and renamed the 5 files im system32\config folder

However, after that I was to switch to the system volume information folder. That was not accessible so I followed the additional instructions linked, which involved copying the five folders from windows\repair into the system32\config folder.

The first 4 worked but when I tried to copy the “system” folder it was not found. The computer will not reboot on exit because the system folder is missing.

I found some blogs online to others who encountered this problem. They were advised to see if there was a System.sav folder and use that as the system folder. I used either that or a system.bak that was in the repair folder and tried using it as my system folder in system32\config.

On restart the computer booted to an older desktop but it also showed some fatal errors and there was no mouse and keyboard again at that point so I ws stuck.

Went back in with the windows xp cd and undid my toying with teh “system” folder so I am back to being in the
middle of the instructions for restoring the registry if I lacked access to the system volume information folder, and in taht process I am told the “system” folder can’t be found to copy from the repair folder (which is true there is no folder “system” in repair.

So I’m missing a system folder and still am unable to restore the usb functionality. can’t boot up at all at this point can still boot from the cd.

Dumb question, shouldn’t the cd have a system folder on it that I can use at this point? Any help is appreciated, including should I hiree somebody to try and sort this out.

It seems the missing system folder is a new problem I created in the process, because the computer did boot up before, albeit w/o any usb ports.

[alembic42]

OK... I’m a computer guy and I usually free-load on sites like this, but I feel like I can contribute this time.

I followed the advice about plugging the hard drive into a different computer. You know, this can be more or less difficult depending on the 2 computers’ configurations. There are a lot of tricks just to that procedure alone.

After plugging the hard drive in, YOU HAVE TO FIX THE PROBLEM THAT MADE THE FOUND NEW HARDWARE WIZARD COME UP!!!!!!

The found new hardware wizard should not come up when installing a standard mouse or keyboard. Usually this is caused by a cryptographic problem where the driver signing is all screwed up. Dial-a-fix can repair this problem on XP; if you’re on Vista I don’t know exactly what to tell you but this is a page from Microsoft discussing the general problem: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822798

Here’s dial-a-fix: http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Dial-a-fix-Download-27328.html

Once you run dial-a-fix and no longer get the Found New Hardware Wizard for every little piece of hardware (try connecting a different mouse or something), you should be able to put the drive back in the computer it came from, and boot it up.

You’re not done yet!! Now you need to clean up the device manager! To make the device manager really show you all the hidden devices, open a command prompt and type:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
start devmgmt.msc

Then when the device manager opens, go to view > show hidden devices.

Remove anything with a yellow splat, or anything under USB that says Unknown Device.

GOOD LUCK JIM! If you found this page, you probably really needed the help!

[pcbugout]

I am in the same boat. On board sata controller quit working. Pulled the main board battery,reset CMOS, now my USB mouse and keyboard no longer work.It defaults to “bad floppy drive” which it is too new to have one. Hooked one up powered through another stand alone power supply and it boots to the floppy. Was going to try and re-flash the bios ...BUT I don’t have and keyboard control because the on board controller only supports USB not PS2.Was going to write a batch file to do a standalone install of the bios but it stops to ask questions during the reflash process which I can’t choose because I have no keyboard support. I even installed a PCI USB card which doesn’t work either. Help!
WWW.PcBugOut.com