Hi, there's a couple of things you can try.
Goto Start/Control Panel/System/Device Manager (under the Hardware tab) and
see if you have entries for 'Keyboards' and 'Mouse and other Pointing
Devices' Double-click on both categories and you should see all the
keyboards, mice, touchpads and pointing sticks (depending on what your laptop
came with).
See if you have entries for the native keyboard and pointing device and if
there is a yellow exclamation mark. Whether there is, open the categorie and
select 'Driver' and then update the driver letting Windows connect' Do this
one at a time for each device, rebooting between tries. You may need to make
sure the HID service is set to automatic and started (Start/Control
Panel/Administrative Tools/Services).
If that doesn't work, you may need the device drivers from your laptop's
recovery disk or you may need to find the drivers on your manufacturer's
website, download them and install. Note: an increasingly common annoyance
when trying to update third party drivers is that you run the install program
and everything looks ok except your device doesn't work or hasn't been
updated. A sometimes fix is to run the third party install, reboot and then
go into Device Manager, find your device and install it yet again as you find
that Windows is running the 2001 native driver. Go through all the options
for updating there (w/o letting Windows connect to the internet) and find
that Windows refuses to install the third-party driver!!!
If this hasn't helped, open my computer and then right-click on the Local
boot disk, select Tools/Error-Checking/check both tabs/ and select 'Check
Now' and reboot and let Checkdisk do its thing. A sometimes more intensive
Checkdisk option is to boot from a Windows XP install disk (or use the
downloaded floppy boot disks from Microsoft Downloads if your laptop has a
floppy drive), load the base system, go into Recovery Console and type in:
'chkdsk /r/f' and hit enter. Good luck.
