Keyboard and Mouse Dead [resolved]

I have an interesting problem for you all. There is a windows 98SE machine in my office which was running fine for as long as it has been here. Yesterday I sat down and used the windows add/remove programs function to remove MS Office XP Pro from this machine. Everything went fine and then I restarted the machine to complete the un-installation.

Upon rebooting suddenly the keyboard and mouse stopped responding. Both are plugged into PS-2 ports, the keyboard direct and the mouse through a USB->PS2 converter; which is how they have always been and working fine. Another interesting thing is that the 3 LEDs on the Keyboard are flashing on and off about once per second, all 3 on, all 3 off, etc.

The keyboard and mouse still work...I have checked them on other machines. Also, on the machine in question, I can boot to DOS and the keyboard works fine there as well as in BIOS setup. I am able to operate the machine in question using remote access. It boots and runs as if nothing is wrong except for the fact that the local keyboard and mouse are not responding.

I am currently running a full system scan (norton Anti-Virus) to check to be sure that it is not infected with a virus but I doubt that is the problem because that was done just yesterday right before the problem occured.

Has anyone encountered this before, and if so do you know how to troubleshoot such a problem? I have laborously searched the web and came up with no helpful solutions.

Please, this is a work machine and I have no power over what software is on it so reformatting and upgrading to windows XP is not going to work here because the powers that be say "impossible". Thanks for the input everyone.

I had a problem like that once, and it was a fairly simple fix (being able to control remotely should help too).

All you need to do is replace the drivers for the mouse/keyboard (I'd guess that Office used some of the same files & removed something that it shouldn't have).

I did it in safe mode (as it uses standard drivers, ignoring whatever you have set), but you can remote control it instead if you like.

I haven't seem 98 for a couple of years so I can't remember exactly how to do it, but I think it's just the drivers tab in "Keyboard" and "Mouse" under control panel (if not try kb & mouse in "System").

I will try reinstalling the drivers for keyboard and mouse. I forgot to mention in my first post however that even while in safe mode, i had no keyboard mouse response and the LED flashing was still occuring on the keyboard. :confused: I'll post back after redoing the drivers. Thanks.

No such luck, I have completed a full system scan which turned up no viruses. Then I removed both devices from the device manager and rebooted and allowed the standard drivers to be reinstalled which did not help at all. Still getting the same problem.

Problem resolved, dont know why I didn't try earlier but plugged the mouse into the USB directly and it built the driver and works fine. keyboard is still dead on PS2 which tells me the PS2 controller must be fried. Thanks for the input. Guess we are going for a PS2-USB adapter :p