Very strange problem with keyboard

[PaulieG]

OK, after cleaning up my hard drive yesterday, my keyboard would not work in Vista Ultimate 64bit. I tried 2 other keyboards. Neither of which would work either. 2 were ps2 keyboards and one was USB. Now, each keyboard was identified at post and would work in the bios. Now here is the really weird part. I decided I would go ahead and do a fresh intall of Vista, as I was about due for it anyway. Just in case, I also cleared cmos just in case I somehow change something in the bios that was causing this (though I doubt it since the keyboard worked in bios). So, I reinstalled Vista, and was able to use the keyboard to put in the activation key. So, I thought I was all set. However, once Windows fully booted, none of the keyboards would work again!! WTF? How is it possible that this problem carried over to a fresh install?

At this point, I became VERY frustrated. I decided to try installing Windows XP pro. The XP installed, and now all of the keyboards work perfectly in windows. This would be fine, but I've got use to Vista now, and would prefer to use it. Anyone have any idea what this might be? Could it have anything to do with installing Vista too many times, so it started to disable functions. I'd really appreciate any input guys.

 

[kyle2020]

it sounds like, and im just hashing out an explanation here, that your motherboards having a pretty rough time with add ons. Have you tried any other USB devices to see if thats the problem?

 

[lemonadesoda]

Sometimes the registry controlset000x gets corrupted. This can happen if you have a crash or power-off without "shutting down".

A corrupted controlset can screw up your USB devices (and other peripherals). I had that happen to my onboard USB ports once and NOTHING I did, including "uninstalling hardware" and rebooting helped. (I didnt try hacking the registry at that point.) But I got it fixed. How?

I installed a PCI USB card. After installing the drivers, ALL USB ports incl. the mainboard started working again. Uninstalled the PCI USB card and all was OK.

I cannot explain why your "fresh install" of Vista didnt fix the issue. Are you sure is was a fresh install and not just a repair job? (Keeping the old registry settings).

 

[mrw1986]

That's very odd indeed, wish I had an answer

 

[PaulieG]

it sounds like, and im just hashing out an explanation here, that your motherboards having a pretty rough time with add ons. Have you tried any other USB devices to see if thats the problem?

All other USB devices were working perfectly. Not to mention the keyboards working perfectly under XP.

 

[PaulieG]

Sometimes the registry controlset000x gets corrupted. This can happen if you have a crash or power-off without "shutting down".

A corrupted controlset can screw up your USB devices (and other peripherals). I had that happen to my onboard USB ports once and NOTHING I did, including "uninstalling hardware" and rebooting helped. (I didnt try hacking the registry at that point.) But I got it fixed. How?

I installed a PCI USB card. After installing the drivers, ALL USB ports incl. the mainboard started working again. Uninstalled the PCI USB card and all was OK.

I cannot explain why your "fresh install" of Vista didnt fix the issue. Are you sure is was a fresh install and not just a repair job? (Keeping the old registry settings).

Yeah, this was a completely fresh install.

 

[PaulieG]

No other ideas guys? I'm still trying to figure this out.

 

[Deleted member 38767]

I had same problem but with my mouse. After fresh install of Vista Ultimate x64 and once after some updates installed.It appear the mouse was disabled (no idea why) in the Device Manager. I enabled it and all is working fine now.

 

[iStink]

Might be a virus :/

When you say you were cleaning up your hard drive, what sort of files were you deleting exactly? How were you deleting them? (Did you use CCleaner?) Tell us every detail.

Check and see how the keyboard is showing up in the hardware list. If it's reading it as a Human Interface Device, you'll need to figure out how to change that.

Also, might be a stretch, but do you have another hard drive you can boot from that you can install Vista to?

 

[PaulieG]

I ran multiple scans. There is no virus. I was just cleaning stuff up from old downloads etc, using Cyberscrub. I don't think it's showing up as a HID, but I'll check on this once I reinstall Vista. I do have some older HDD's, but nothing that I really want to install a OS to.