force Windows XP to load PS/2 keyboard drivers?

[Thorsten Eckardt]

Hi everybody,

does anyone know a way to force Win XP to load the PS/2 keyboard driver
at bootup?

As far as I know, XP always tries to auto-detect a keyboard at the PS/2
port. If none is found, the corresponding drivers - i8042prt.sys and
kbdclass.sys - will not be loaded.

And this is exactly my problem: At work I have several server computers
connected to a KVM switch. XP does not recognize the keyboard behind the
swith and therefore does not load the driver. As a result the keyboard
cannot be used. (The PS/2 mouse driver is being loaded, though.)

The problem is not the KVM switch, though, but Windows XP, which the
following phenomenons have proven: The PS/2 keyboard behind the switch
is working fine in the Bios, under Linux or starting a DOS session (all
on the same computer mentioned above). Even Windows 2000 gets along fine
with my KVM-configuration. Only Win XP does not load the keyboard driver.

Theoretically, the keyboard behind the switch *would* work under Win XP,
though (if the driver *was* loaded). I know that, because if I connect
the keyboard directly to the pc (without KVM switch) during POST, then
unplug it at the XP login screen and replace it with the switch,
everything is working fine. XP auto-detects the keyboard at bootup and
loads the driver, which I can then use with the keyboard behind the
switch without any problems.

This is really annoying: Everything could be working fine, but the
driver is not being loaded, just because Win XP "thinks" that there is
no keyboard present.

This takes be back to my initial question: Can I circumvent the
auto-detection of the PS/2 keyboard somehow and indstead *force* Windows
XP to load the corresponding keyboard driver, no matter what? (In the
past, with less automatized Windows versions, that had always been
possible.) This would solve my problem for sure.

I am grateful for any help.

Best regards
Thorsten Eckardt

 

[Thorsten Eckardt]

Hi everybody.

I have not been able to resolve my problem properly. Apparently I don't
have a chance to make XP load the keyboard driver when my keyboard is
hooked up through the KVM switch.

However, I have found a decent work-around: Instead of shutting down the
PC, I just set it to hibernate. I am quite surprised that the following
procedure actually works:

1. At first, I connect a keyboard directly to the PS/2 port and start
Windows XP. As it should be, the keyboard is recognized and the standard
keyboard driver is loaded.
2. During bootup - no later than at the login screen - I disconnect the
keyboard from the PS/2 port and replace it by the KVM switch. Because
the keyboard driver is already loaded, the keyboard behind the KVM
switch is now working absolutely fine.
3. Now I do not shut down the computer, but always send it to hibernate
instead.
4. Whenever I turn the computer back on, XP still does *not* recognize
the keyboard behind the KVM switch. The latter works anyway. Why? Well,
coming out of hibernate mode, the OS loads the previous RAM state (that
was saved to disk) back into memory - and there the keyboard driver is
still running from before going into hibernate...

The only disadvantage of this work-around: Once in ten days I go through
the described procedure (switching cables, etc.). This way I can
guarantee that windows gets a "fresh" restart every now and then.

Regards
Thorsten