Wireless Keyboard/Mouse Stops Working

[Hammith]

Overview
After a seemingling random interval of playing Crysis or Anarchy Online, my keyboard and mouse both stop working at the same time.

Details
While I'm playing either of the two previously mentioned games, both my keyboard and mouse with just suddenly cut out. The base station still seems to detect them if I try and reconnect to them, but no input seems to actually get to the PC. Sometimes it happens after only a couple of minutes, sometimes up to an hour or more. I've played both games without any issue sometimes. I've played Dawn of War and Team fortress 2 without any of these sort of lock ups.

I've been able to get them working again but only after a rather complex process:
1) Shut down computer by pressing power button and letting windows shut down normally.
2) Restart computer with wireless base station unplugged.
3) Shut down computer again.
4) Restart computer with wireless base station plugged in again.

In order to try and get this fixed I reformatted and reinstalled windows, still with no luck. I currently have the base station hooked up to the PS/2 ports and this seems to lessen the errors a bit, but they still happen. And it may just be that I'm becoming more used to it and not becoming as enraged.

Did it work normally at one time, or has the problem always existed?
Yes, up until 2 weeks ago, when I was at a LAN party and did quite a bit of installing of games, my mouse and keyboard worked fine.

Consistent and repeatable / Entirely random / Semi-random?
Semi-Random, no real evident cause, but has only happened in Crysis and Anarchy Online

I already tried these steps
Reformatting (Computer needed it anyway)
Attaching base station through PS/2 Ports and running just off windows base PS/2 drivers

My software
Windows Vista v6.0 SP1
Windows Firewall
Avast! Antivirus

My hardware
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775
Video Card: EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16
RAM: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel (2 sets of them)
Power Supply: COOLMAX CUG-700B 700W ATX 12V( V.2.2)
Mouse: Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 5000
Keyboard: Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard 4000

Please help me Anandtech techies.

 

[robisbell]

batteries are dying, if they are rechargable, then they need to be tested and possibly replaced.

 

[Hammith]

Tested all four batteries, and while the mouse ones were at about half the gauge, keyboard ones were pretty full. Replaced them, now it's just waiting to see if they do it again.

 

[Hammith]

Confirmed as not the batteries, replaced the batteries and it then pulled the same trick on Team Fortress 2 this time.

I'm thinking it might be a fault of some kind in the wireless base station. Any idea on how one would check that?

 

[robisbell]

hmm, so you have 2 base stations since they are different series, correct?

 

[Hammith]

Nope, same base station, two plugs at the end. One is a PS/2 keyboard plug, other is a USB one. I've got an adapter put on the USB one to make it a PS/2 mouse plug. This doesn't seem to affect the performance any, and in fact improved it a little for a while.

Also, it seems to happen much more quickly in TF2 than the other games. That also seems to rule out software stuff.

Also, now I'm noticing that when pressing and holding down the 'w' key, it stops putting out 'w's if I wiggle the mouse around

This is getting just plain weird.

-Hammith

 

[robisbell]

can you hook it up to another machine? are you using the drivers for it or the stock windows drivers?

 

[faxon]

sounds like your mouse and keyboard's wireless signals are conflicting to me. also, where is the base station located in relation to the mouse and keyboard? i have a microsoft wireless laser mouse, and it doesnt seem to really get through to the base station unless i put it in an area where there is literally NOTHING blocking the signal to and from it (i keep it about 4 inches from my mouse now on average). i dont have a wireless keyboard though so i honestly dont know how that would affect it other than possibly using the same radio frequency. also, do you have a wireless internet router? if so try connecting an ethernet cable to your computer instead and see if the problem persists