Dead Keyboard has me stumped

[Bruce]

Often when I've tried to figure out some stupid problem, just asking for help leads me to the answer. Other times, somebody suggests something I didn't think of.

I've got a Win95 machine that has been working flawlessly for a long time. For some reason, the windows is loosing the keyboard.

The keyboard works fine in BIOS setup.
If I halt scandisk or some other pre-windows activity, the keyboard works fine.
If I let windows complete its initialization, the keyboard somehow gets disabled. No key works (including the NumLock / CapsLock / ScrollLock lights -- which is my usual test for an unplugged keyboard.) The mouse still works fine, as do all the applications, but anything requiring keyboard input simply halts and waits. . . .)

I did try a different keyboard.

Any suggestions?

[fizler]

whats the error message? my best guess is that the plug for the keyboard has somehow become lose and doesnt make contact..might try jiggiling it!

[LBaker]

I've had problems in the past like that. The only solution I could find was reinstalling the os. Windows gets wacked after time. How long has the os been installed on this machine? It may be time to backup your data and do a clean install of the os. :(

[pelligrini]

Have you tried deleting the thing in Device Manager?

[viperdog]

Every time I've had this problem or seen it...

It's a irq conflict caused by something that got changed in windows.
The mouse & keyboard ports are just serial ports by another name and the keyboard needs irq 1 to work right. Since windows is a "plug & play" OS, everything works right until windows fires up and changes the irq's around.

Pell's idea is a good one..delete the keyboard and let windows try to re-install it on boot up. You might not get that to work if something else is hogging irq 1, so at that point try deleteing some other stuff ( like serial ports, parallel port, etc: to make room on the list for stuff to settle) delete the sound card, video card, lan card in that order and as a last resort, since they may need their driver disk and if you are like me I rat hole those disk where even I can't find them...or I've downloaded the updated drivers and can't remember what file I need..

Just one last note... twice it was a screwball sound card that got me...deleted & updated the driver and it fixed it.. once it was a lan card that decided to try and share irq 12.(which killed the mouse, the mouse port tried to go somewhere else)..couldn't get it to play nice until I deleted the sound card, re-installed the lan card first...rebooted again and then installed the sound card..

Now with that said....if this is a USB keyboard..you can ignore the above and re-install the usb drivers..

good luck!

[Bruce]

Originally posted by pelligrini
Have you tried deleting the thing in Device Manager?

I never though of deleting a keyboard and reinstalling the device. I deleted it but will wait for the sequence to end before rebooting.

Originally posted by fizler
whats the error message? my best guess is that the plug for the keyboard has somehow become lose and doesnt make contact..might try jiggiling it!

No messages at all. Just nothing happens when I press keys.

I jiggled the cable many times. I can't explain why it seems to work fine in dos but die in windows if it's a physical problem. I'm betting on software.

Originally posted by viperdog
Every time I've had this problem or seen it...

It's a irq conflict caused by something that got changed in windows.
The mouse & keyboard ports are just serial ports by another name and the keyboard needs irq 1 to work right.

Now with that said....if this is a USB keyboard..you can ignore the above and re-install the usb drivers..


The only thing in DeviceManager showing a conflict was a mouse -- which I've deleted -- but I'm waiting for a sequence to end to reboot.

No USB. It's old hardware and Win95a.