[RESOLVED] riddle me this one.

[kleinma]

just throwing this out there to see if anyone has any thoughts.

I have someone's PC that the USB cord for the keyboard was severed.

After that happened, none of the USB ports work, but only in Windows.

USB keyboard works to get into the BIOS or do a startup device selection, but once control is handed off to windows, the USB ports stop working. They still have power, as the optical mouse lights up, but the devices do not actually load.

I booted a BartPE Live windows CD, which is like a live linux CD, and USB works fine in there, so its not a hardware issue, its something with the Windows install.

The tricky part here is that the machine is
1) small form factor, with no expansion slots, so adding in a USB pci card or something like that is not an option
2) there are no PS2 ports
3) there is a password on Windows, so I can't even get past the login screen in either safe mode or regular mode.

I was trying to find where the hardware information is stored in the registry, in hopes to delete and let windows reinstall it, but I don't even think that is possible to do if you can't get past the login screen, I can remote load the registry hive to modify it, but I don't think windows will reinstall the internal USB hub until it can get to the desktop.

Yes I can reinstall Windows, but I am trying to exhaust other options prior to doing that.

[kleinma]

I resolved the issue enough to get things working, but there are still some weird problems.

I ended up using a linux live CD that I have which can blank out passwords from the SAMS database so that the machine would log right into the desktop instead of the welcome screen waiting for a password.

That got me as far as seeing a "Found new hardware wizard", which of course I could not click or do anything with.

So I got a little creative, and write a vbscript file that would wait 4 minutes (amount of time it took to get the found new hardware dialog up on the screen after boot) and then send Enter to have it install the software. I then got a "this driver is not signed blah blah" warning, so I had to tweak the vbscript to send 2 tabs, and then enter again, and then enter on the finish screen after a 30 second sleep.

The real pain was in order to edit the vbscript file, I had to boot the a live XP CD so I could edit files on the C drive with a keyboard an mouse. My original thought was to load the VBS file from the network, but that resulted in a security prompt before the file would run, which I of course could not click.

I also had to use the XP Live CD to mount the software registry hive and add the VBS file to the run key so it would execute when windows booted.

So after all that, I was able to get the mouse and keyboard working. It turns out the issue stemmed from this machine thinking every driver is not signed, even when it is. It gives you an unsigned driver prompt for every device you plug in, even if the driver being used is one that shipped with XP and was written by Microsoft. I was unable to find any solutions to this, other than people saying they had to reinstall when they were faced with this. It would have been nice to be able to fully fix the issue, but as long as the keyboard and mouse work, any subsequent prompts in the future can at least be clicked through.

[wakawaka]

Can you use a PS/2 connection and remove the USB and keyboard drivers then restart and re-install them? Any BIOS settings for the USB's that might be of use? Perhaps resetting the BIOS might have an impact?

It is weird that all the ports don't work. I suppose I could see something like a metal peice shearing the cables and it happened to jump the hot and ground cables damaging that perticular port, but all of them is kind of weird.

[kleinma]

Can you use a PS/2 connection and remove the USB and keyboard drivers then restart and re-install them?

See point #2 in the first post above.

[kleinma]

It is weird that all the ports don't work. I suppose I could see something like a metal peice shearing the cables and it happened to jump the hot and ground cables damaging that perticular port, but all of them is kind of weird.

The ports actually worked just fine, the cause of the issue is Windows not automatically recognizing and installing the devices when they are plugged in. Instead it pops up a found new hardware wizard, and also prompts that the driver is unsigned even when it is. Any other USB device would be no issue, as one could click through the prompts, but when the keyboard and mouse don't work, that makes doing that a problem.

The other postings I found on the web regarding similar issues never had any resolutions, only reformat/reinstall.

[si_the_geek]

It sounds to me as is there is a problem with the certificate store (the wizard showing is probably due to them being "unsigned")... but as I've never had to deal with it myself, I've got no idea how you would check it or fix it.

[Justa Lol]

I've had USB failing me a few times, moving the mouse or keyboard to another USB port to reload the drivers always works.

[kleinma]

It sounds to me as is there is a problem with the certificate store (the wizard showing is probably due to them being "unsigned")... but as I've never had to deal with it myself, I've got no idea how you would check it or fix it.

I agree. Or the catroot folders, however I checked all that out and could not find any discrepency versus a known good system. I am sure it is a "fixable" issue, but of course a few year old PC, how many hours can you spend on it before its not worth the time invested in fixing.