Keyboard Issues

[Thomas K]

So here I am servicing a computer, for a virus, and trying to boot into AVG Rescue Disk, and discover, oh, keyboard isnt giving me boot menu.  Try another keyboard... nope, try another keyboard (2nd 2 are usb)  nope.  call customer, ask him to bring in HIS keyboard (USB).  Again, no.  No response on the boot screen.  No System recovery, no boot menu, no system diagnostics... no bios setup..

None of the above allows me in, however the first keyboard I used, is a ps/2.  I prefer them, they tend to just work with no guesswork.  Well. This one which is known to be good, seems to have num lock and caps lock flashing at a regular pace, both together.

I boot into PC Doctor WinPE version, I get in, I manage to get around by mouse.  Now, previously the USB Keyboards worked, and I had a 'other devices' where mouse and keyboard show up.

With the ps/2 keyboard, nothing shows anywhere.  Is this regular?  I never noticed before...  but I really dont want to have to try to clear the bios, or replace the CMOS battery if its not gonna fix it..  Any thoughts?

[Kris_PCD]

My first thought is that the issue is with the motherboard since the issue appears to follow you across multiple keyboards, and exists during boot and in Windows PE. I would go ahead with your plan to remove the CMOS battery, and see how things progress after that.

Sorry that I can't provide a better answer, but I can't recall having ever run into that issue before.  Let me know how things turn out.

Thanks,
Kris

[Thomas K]

yea, not gonna do the battery quite yet.  Got the wife out running for a brand new one.  Might as well replace it if Im yanking it..

I can tell you under 'system information' -> Input Devices I show a empty tree line, and then beneath that, its USB Device.

HID\VID_05b8&PID_3038 for the device ID, object is 0000001d running service mouhid.  which seems to me to be a mouse... and yet I hoped perhaps its the keyboard too..

[Kris_PCD]

Yup, looks like that is a mouse.


While you are waiting on the battery you could still try clearing the BIOS, but I look forward to the outcome regardless.

[Thomas K]

In conversation with the customer, he's decided to replace, and just have me recover the data from the old hard drive.

It doesn't matter what keyboard I plug into his, I have issues, this last round after having manually deleted a couple virus/trojans, the system seemed slower, and the fake antivirus is still coming up.  (the files deleted where numbered files  ie 6589440.exe in the users main directory)

The moment I plugged in a USB drive to run rkill...  to dump suspect programs from TSR, it froze the USB Mouse.  Plugged a ps/2 mouse in.  Nothing.  Im really thinking the ps/2 ports have major issues, and if I'm having that sort of trouble with the USB, then its even more the same with the mother board.  This is after resetting the CMOS, with the jumper, and replacing the CR2032 mobo battery.  Which btw, did absolutely nothing.  Didnt force a setup entry.

btw, rkill from bleepingcomputer is completely useful