Keyboard locks at welcome screen

[Tom Spence]

I'm running XP-Pro (which is updated from MS weekly). It was installed
in Jan 2006. Everything has been fine until mid-March of 2007 when this
trouble started. I think it came after applying some critical updates
from MS.

When I log the current user off the welcome screen appears showing all
users BUT there is NO response to either the keyboard or the mouse. (Not
even Ctrl-Alt-Del!). The only recourse is to push the power off button
and then restart the computer again. I found that I should end a user
session by clicking "turn off the computer" followed by "restart" which
sequence causes a reboot and shows a welcome screen which recognizes the
keyboard and mouse.

Any help would be appreciated.

Tom Spence, Baltimore

 

[Rock]

I'm running XP-Pro (which is updated from MS weekly). It was installed in
Jan 2006. Everything has been fine until mid-March of 2007 when this
trouble started. I think it came after applying some critical updates
from MS.

When I log the current user off the welcome screen appears showing all
users BUT there is NO response to either the keyboard or the mouse. (Not
even Ctrl-Alt-Del!). The only recourse is to push the power off button
and then restart the computer again. I found that I should end a user
session by clicking "turn off the computer" followed by "restart" which
sequence causes a reboot and shows a welcome screen which recognizes the
keyboard and mouse.

We have seen reports of this problem since last October but no clear cause
or solution. If you think it was caused by a group of updates, the best
course is to address the issue right away. Trying to backup track after
several months makes it much harder. The way to address this initially is
to uninstall those updates from Add/Remove programs then do a system restore
to before the problem occurred. If it resolves the issue, install the
updates manually one at a time testing in between to see if you can isolate
the problem.

As it is one thing to try is go to the Windows Update site, look in the
update history to see what updates were installed when the problem occurred,
and uninstall them to see the effect.

I don't know what the result will be, given how much time has elapsed, and
you have undoubtedly installed other updates. I wouldn't attempt this
without first imaging the system to an external hard drive using something
like Acronis True Image Home. That way if a bigger problem results restore
the image to the current working state.