Dire need of help here, PC for my Son.

[Trick Pony]

I am at a loss of words... I have spent endless hours building this new pc for my Son (he's 10), a couple hours a day for days now, installing every single latest driver and a number of new games for him. Everything worked perfect, reboot after reboot, just in time for him to return home.

I power down, unplug everything and put it in his room (being sure not to bump the case or anything like that) plug everything in, power up and now the keyboard AND mouse dont work, I swapped the mouse and keyboard, powered up - NOTHING. %50 of the time I can get to the DEL key on boot to get to the safe mode screen, but once there the arrow keys wont work.

I tried a THIRD set of mouse and keyboard, nothing.

What in the heck do I do?
Please take a moment and reply if you have any ideas, this is a surprise for a child.
Thank you very much.

Trick Pony

 

[Vageetasjn]

Will it boot to windows? If so, do they work there? Try different usb ports?

 

[Trick Pony]

It will get to the operating system, but cntrl-alt-delete, nothing, mouse nothing.

Neither of the three sets of board/mice are usb.

 

[MarcVenice]

reset the cmos ... can you get in the bios btw ? weird problem for sure ... tried all different USB ports too ?

 

[jkresh]

its possible your ps2 ports are bad (though reset the cmos first to see), best bet would be to get a usb keyboard/mouse set.

 

[Trick Pony]

OK this is strange. Unplugged mouse, put in a working USB wireless, boot it up. Just after the OS is up, if I move the mouse fast, the cursor jumps and blips in response. Barely nudging in the direction of the mouse, after 5 minutes of doing this the cursor just came to life and started working! But no keyboard still. What the heck, did both those key/mouse ports go bad?! in 2 mminutes of transporting it to another room?!

And no I cant even get to the bios. Wonder if I should go out and buy a USB keyboard...

Any ideas? This is so odd. And this is all new equipment...

 

[Trick Pony]

Can ya tell me how to reset that cmos Jkresh?

Thanks for everyones help on this.

 

[MarcVenice]

Resetting the cmos is done by removing the battery on the motherboard. Check your mobo manual, because you 'might' have to move a jumper as well, although often removing tthe battery will do the trick. Then wait 2-3 minutes and put it back in.

 

[Operandi]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Resetting the cmos is done by removing the battery on the motherboard. Check your mobo manual, because you 'might' have to move a jumper as well, although often removing tthe battery will do the trick. Then wait 2-3 minutes and put it back in.

There is almost always a reset CMOS jumper on the board. You can refer to your manual but it's usually located near the battery.

If you can't find the jumper removing the battery as mentioned above will certainly do the trick.

 

[mechBgon]

From your description, it sounds like at one point you did have the keyboard and mouse in the wrong sockets. 1) you're not supposed to do that, 2) you're not supposed to hot-plug PS/2 equipment. So it's conceivable that something got the magic smoke let out of it.

Possible budget solution: use USB keyboard and mouse.

 

[Psymon]

Just to add a tid bit of information on the battery method of resetting your CMOS. It is very, very, very vital to ensure that when you put the battery back in the Positive and Negative sides are correct. I've heard some bad things come out of putting the battery in the wrong way.

Kind of a given, but just give it a double check before you put the battery back in.

As far as the actual problem, I think using a USB keyboard and mouse is the easiest solution. Sounds like your PS/2 ports just got fried.

You may as well reset the CMOS since it's free though. It might fix something.