Windows 2000 mouse & keyboard problem

[Chuck]

Hi,

I've got a major problem with my windows 2000 install. Since I uninstalled IE6 beta when my machine loads up my mouse or keyboard do not work (there is no pointer on the screen and the numlock key on the keyboard won't even toggle).

I had givenup, and wanted to try and re-install windows, but when I tried to it said that it could not install onto the old partition and if I wanted to reinstall it i would have to re-format the partition (which I don't want to do as i'd lose all of my work! - I don't have enough space on other disks to back it all up). (I've lost the EBD).

I can access the main HD via a win2k install i've done one my secondary (smaller) HD, but I can't see what I could do to fix it. I've tried replacing the WINNT/system32/config/system file with the one in WINNT/repair but that didn't seem to make any difference.

So I suppose i'm really asking two questions? How could I fix the mosue / keyboard problem? or How can I re-install windows without needing a format?

The troublesome disk in question is a IBM Deskstar on an IDE RAID port on a Abit KT7-RAID.

Thanks

 

[Nevo]

Don't reinstall. Do a repair. That'll retain your OS and settings.

Or, boot the machine, go to another machine on the same network, edit the registry remotely, and do the following:

On the dead machine, find out what HKLM\System\Select\Current is. Call this <current> below.

Then, go to HKLM\System\ControlSet<current>\Services\i8042 and be sure the start value is set to 1.

Do you have Logitech keyboard/mouse? Remote control software? Thinkpad trackpad drivers? All of these can try to replace i8042prt with their own driver.

I8042prt.sys handles the low level keyboard and mouse input and passes the data up to the OS.