Help! Keyboard frozen at login screen

[George Neuner]

Hi all,

Following an application crash and a shutdown/reboot to clear up the
mess I am unable to login because XP is no longer recognizing the
keyboard. The network shares are available so I know the OS is
running, but I cannot login on the console or through Remote Desktop
[which was/is activated].

The keyboard is PS/2 and works in BIOS or if I boot a DOS floppy or
the Windows CD - so I know the hardware is ok. The mouse is USB and
it works so I can't tell if other PS/2 devices are kaput. The system
is XPpro sp2.

Safe mode is no help ... I can't log in. I tried using the boot menu
to revert to last working configuration, but that didn't work either -
I tried safe mode boot first so that probably fouled me up. I also
found an earlier post in this forum recommending using Recovery
Console to replace KBDHID.SYS with I8042PRT.SYS. When I looked there
was no kbdhid.sys file. I took a chance and created one but it made
no difference.

I have an emergency OS partition on the machine so I will be busy for
a while making sure all the data is safe. I'm hoping someone here can
lead me back to a working machine without blowing away the OS in the
main partition and starting over as it will take me several days to
reinstall everything.

Please reply here because my email is on the cursed partition.

Thanks,
George

 

[PenguinChris]

I had the exact same problem. I tried a new keyboard, and a USB
keyboard as well, but it didn't fix it. Eventually I found someone's
messages online about the same problem, and the only way they managed
to fix it was to reinstall the OS.

I tried everything I could come up with, but to no avail. Until someone
finds a better solution for this problem, the only thing you can count
on working is a reinstall of XP. It's annoying and time consuming, but
it's better than having a computer you can't use because the keyboard
doesn't work.

There's potentially a way to solve this problem within windows, but if
your administrator accounts are password protected it's useless because
you can't log in without a keyboard. Extremely frustrating. Your best
bet is to back up your data, as you've been doing, and just reinstall
XP.

 

[George Neuner]

There's potentially a way to solve this problem within windows, but if
your administrator accounts are password protected it's useless because
you can't log in without a keyboard.

Do you know how to solve [PS/2 keyboard not working]? I can muck with
the registry or system files through my alternate OS installation.

George

 

[George Neuner]

Stumbled onto a solution on Microsoft's site ... KB article 268603.

The fix that worked was the Recovery Console procedure in the middle
of the article. It gives directions to replace XP's device database
"<windir>\system32\config\system" with a saved version from
"<windir>\system32\repair".

This appears to have fixed everything though it has left me wondering.
The file from my repair directory was dated 2+ months ago and is half
the size of [broken] file in my config directory. AFAICT, all my
devices are present and working ... so I'm wondering why the broken
file was so much larger.

Anyway, thanks to all who replied.
George

----

Hi all,

Following an application crash and a shutdown/reboot to clear up the
mess I am unable to login because XP is no longer recognizing the
keyboard. The network shares are available so I know the OS is
running, but I cannot login on the console or through Remote Desktop
[which was/is activated].

The keyboard is PS/2 and works in BIOS or if I boot a DOS floppy or
the Windows CD - so I know the hardware is ok. The mouse is USB and
it works so I can't tell if other PS/2 devices are kaput. The system
is XPpro sp2.

Safe mode is no help ... I can't log in. I tried using the boot menu
to revert to last working configuration, but that didn't work either -
I tried safe mode boot first so that probably fouled me up. I also
found an earlier post in this forum recommending using Recovery
Console to replace KBDHID.SYS with I8042PRT.SYS. When I looked there
was no kbdhid.sys file. I took a chance and created one but it made
no difference.

I have an emergency OS partition on the machine so I will be busy for
a while making sure all the data is safe. I'm hoping someone here can
lead me back to a working machine without blowing away the OS in the
main partition and starting over as it will take me several days to
reinstall everything.

Please reply here because my email is on the cursed partition.

Thanks,
George