[RESOLVED] interesting USB problem

I have a customer who brought me a computer that they had attempted to do a repair install using the XP recovery CD from Dell. They did an inplace repair install, not a format/reinstall. They got to a certain point of the reinstallation when a prompt comes up about the intel ICH7 usb host controller driver. You need to click yes (or no) to proceed with this driver installation and continue the repair install.

The problem is, this Dell has no PS2 ports, and the USB devices do NOT work because the host controller driver is not installed at this point. USB keyboard/mouse do work in BIOS and POST, but not when the repair installation is occuring.

I don't really think there is a solution to this one other than backing up the important data and doing a clean reinstallation.

Desktop system? And NO ps2 ports? Wow.... I don't think I've ever had a USB keyboard that didn't work in BIOS or POST... but then come to think about it, I'm usually paranoid about such things and will plug in a ps2 keyboard during builds. Makes me wonder how do they expect people to be able to do certain things with their systems? Or is it a conspiracy to keep the like of FireDog and GeekSquad in business?

-tg

Is there anything in the BIOS to enable legacy mode USB? That might be enough to get a keyboard or mouse to work.

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Originally Posted by techgnome

Desktop system? And NO ps2 ports? Wow.... I don't think I've ever had a USB keyboard that didn't work in BIOS or POST... but then come to think about it, I'm usually paranoid about such things and will plug in a ps2 keyboard during builds. Makes me wonder how do they expect people to be able to do certain things with their systems? Or is it a conspiracy to keep the like of FireDog and GeekSquad in business?

-tg

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It seems to be a pretty common thing now with Dell consumer line desktop machines. The USB keyboard does work in bios and post, it just does't work during Windows XP setup.

There also is no legacy mode USB setting, which I assume is because it always operates in this mode since there are no PS2 ports to fall back on.


I actually made some progress, but now I am still stuck. I decided to try to disable the USB controller in the bios, so when XP setup gets to that point it doesn't try to install the drivers. I figure if I could get past this, maybe there would be some other way to get things working later. After doing this, it got past the part that was hanging up before, but I got the same driver prompt for the onboard audio. So I disabled the onboard USB, audio, and NIC, and then it made it past that point until I got a "could not copy fastprox.dl_" from the XP disc. It did look a little scratched, so I made and ISO and burned a copy, but I still get the same error. The file is indeed on the disc, so I am not sure why the hangup is occuring.

dells also have an adapter available that turns the serial port into a ps2 port.

I did read something about BIOS update that it will solve. But in this case.......

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Originally Posted by kleinma

It seems to be a pretty common thing now with Dell consumer line desktop machines. The USB keyboard does work in bios and post, it just does't work during Windows XP setup.

There also is no legacy mode USB setting, which I assume is because it always operates in this mode since there are no PS2 ports to fall back on.


I actually made some progress, but now I am still stuck. I decided to try to disable the USB controller in the bios, so when XP setup gets to that point it doesn't try to install the drivers. I figure if I could get past this, maybe there would be some other way to get things working later. After doing this, it got past the part that was hanging up before, but I got the same driver prompt for the onboard audio. So I disabled the onboard USB, audio, and NIC, and then it made it past that point until I got a "could not copy fastprox.dl_" from the XP disc. It did look a little scratched, so I made and ISO and burned a copy, but I still get the same error. The file is indeed on the disc, so I am not sure why the hangup is occuring.

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This is one of the problems with WinXP is it was released before USB only computers where built (what I mean is that they don't ship with ps/2 ports anymore) and the WinXP installation does the USB stuff last.

Does the setup load any USB drivers at all when it's starting up? Usually the CD loads the normal installation setup from the bootable cd even if you're doing a repair OS.

I've noticed w/ Vista you don't have this USB problem like with win2000/xp and I can imagine it's even less of a problem with Win7.

1) there is no serial port either, if there was, I would have just tried to use a serial mouse. The back mobo plate has the on board audio, nic, and 6 USB ports. That is IT, other than a video adapter which is blocked off (and probably disabled) because there is an AGP video card.

2) The bios was A05 and the newest was A07. There was only 1 change listed in the bios revision and it had nothing to do with this, but yeah I did try it, and it didn't do anything.

3) I think if I were to do a clean install, this would not happen. I have installed Windows XP about 300 times on machines using just USB keyboard and mouse, regardless of PS2 ports being available, and I have not had this issue. You don't normally get the unsigned driver prompt, and I really do not believe that the ICH7 drivers from intel (which come on the windows CD) are not signed. Something happened, but like I said, the customer gave me the machine already in this state of half reinstalled, because they tried to do it themselves. I am pretty sure I could have fixed it VERY fast if they had not started this process, but now that they have, there are only 2 options, somehow get it to work, or do a clean install.

If it were me. Back up the files. Clean install.

-tg

Of course. The problem is when a customer gives you a computer, they really expect to just get it back working, minus the problem they were having when they brought it to you.

So you do a clean install, and all of a sudden they are like "where is that (probably illegal) copy of office my brother in law installed 4 years ago", "where are all my emails", etc...

yeah its easy enough to backup data in a user profile, but doing a clean install on a computer for someone else, is always a last resort.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

Of course. The problem is when a customer gives you a computer, they really expect to just get it back working, minus the problem they were having when they brought it to you.

So you do a clean install, and all of a sudden they are like "where is that (probably illegal) copy of office my brother in law installed 4 years ago", "where are all my emails", etc...

yeah its easy enough to backup data in a user profile, but doing a clean install on a computer for someone else, is always a last resort.

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When I resort to doing a clean install like this for someone, I'm always in contact with them, I ask them what programs they currently use (since a clean install wipes out those programs they haven't touched in 3+ years), where all of their data is, how they manage things like email, turbo tax, etc...

After all that, I grab what I can and wipe the drive so on and so forth.

I do to, it is usually the programs they "got" from someone that become a problem. I am not for pirated software obviously, but I also do not want to tell a customer they need to purchase a few hundred dollar copy of office because the one they had (legit or not) is now gone.

Office is really just an example though, usually these peoples computers are loaded with random apps they so desperately need, but have no idea where they got them.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

I do to, it is usually the programs they "got" from someone that become a problem. I am not for pirated software obviously, but I also do not want to tell a customer they need to purchase a few hundred dollar copy of office because the one they had (legit or not) is now gone.

Office is really just an example though, usually these peoples computers are loaded with random apps they so desperately need, but have no idea where they got them.

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Yea, that's always an issue for me too, but it usually comes down to: either I fix it by re-formatting or they can try to find someone else to fix it.

Yeah I agree. I have fixed some nasty computer problems where geek squad would have just reformatted and charged 3x what I do.

However a point does come along where I can't justify the time spent for the price I charge.

have you tried both repair options? You could also do a "clean" install without formatting which in theory wouldn't delete any installs but would force some programs like msoffice to be reinstalled anyway.

My dell is the same way... no ps2 ports. It does have the standard serial port that can operate in ps2 mode.
The only other thing i can think of is maybe when it was reading your disk it did not copy the missing file into the temp directory. Have you tried the switch that copies all install files onto the hard disk? You have to run it from dos to do this but it helps sometimes and if he's got a fat32 file system you could do that.

The problem is the customer started the reinstall process prior to ever calling me. When you boot the computer right now, it flashes the windows XP splash logo, and then goes directly into "setup is restarting....." and brings you to the second phase of Windows XP installation (ie not the blue screen preinstallation mode).

I have not yet tried to actually boot from the CD to do a setup again, because I am currently ghosting the drive because I do not want to get stuck losing the data while experimenting. I also could not access the user data directories without taking ownership when I slaved the drive, and I wasn't sure if taking ownership would have ramifications with the repair install or not.

I also have a feeling booting into the CD for a "repair" install will fail because a repair install was started and not finished. I won't know for sure until I test, but I believe when it does the "searching for previous versions of windows" routine, it will not find the existing install and give the repair option.

I did try to edit the winnt.sif file that has the setup information on it to bypass driver signiung, but it had no effect. Perhaps because the data from that file had already been read and commited somewhere else.

After ghosting, I would try booting from the CD (which is what I thought you were doing already) and doing a repair os from there.

yeah. I will post back with that result. The only saving grace on this job is the customer screwed up the machine, so if theory even me giving it back formatted with windows and no preserved user data, they really can't even get mad at me, since they did this to themselves. Other scenarios, like where they give you a machine that has some problem like a virus, but the machine still boots and they can see their files, and you lose all their data, that tends to make it a lot worse.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

yeah. I will post back with that result. The only saving grace on this job is the customer screwed up the machine, so if theory even me giving it back formatted with windows and no preserved user data, they really can't even get mad at me, since they did this to themselves. Other scenarios, like where they give you a machine that has some problem like a virus, but the machine still boots and they can see their files, and you lose all their data, that tends to make it a lot worse.

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yeah i did that once to my motherinlaw's computer. she gave us hers to fix and while i was installing windows i accidently chose the wrong install options and deleted her partition.

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Originally Posted by Lord Orwell

yeah i did that once to my motherinlaw's computer. she gave us hers to fix and while i was installing windows i accidently chose the wrong install options and deleted her partition.

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I bet that went over well....

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Originally Posted by JuggaloBrotha

I bet that went over well....

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well she wasn't happy about it, but i kind of blamed it on the dozen or so trojans on her system coupled with a bad ram chip.

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Originally Posted by Lord Orwell

well she wasn't happy about it, but i kind of blamed it on the dozen or so trojans on her system coupled with a bad ram chip.

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Awesome cover up :) I've done that a few times (with comps from friends of friends)

I did resolve this. After ghosting the drive to ensure I had a backup to work with, I tried the repair install option from booting off the cd again.

It asked me if I wanted to continue the first install, or start over, but not the same way it did when I did not boot from the CD. So I told it to continue, and it copied all the files over again.

When it got to phase 2 this time, the USB worked, and I did not get the driver signing prompts like I did before. I did however get a number of "windows can not copy the file xxxxx.xxx" even though the file was clearly on the disk, where the installation was looking, and i tried 3 known good discs. Since this was a repair install anyway (probably an unneeded one at that) i just said to skip them. I got the prompt for at least 3 dozen file names.

After this was all done, windows booted, and worked fine. I then immediatly installed service pack 3, which overwrote most if not all of these files it could not copy.

Everything is working normally now, so case is closed. ;)

really strange. I've had windows OEM disks tell me they were missing files, but always odd ones like theme sounds.

I am not really sure what caused it, but they were many important files, like iexplore.ex_ and wmplayer.ex_, regedit.ex_, etc...

however, since they already were on the system, i guess once it got past that point, it was still OK. Installing SP3 replaces most of these system files anyway with the newest versions.