Hello People,

Recently installed a new external hard drive to backup my stuff, since then was unable to see my CD-R/W drive on My computer . Found some help online which suggested removing 'Upper' and 'lower' filters from here in my registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet/Control/Class/

I did so and rebooted and I believe I can now see it (Because it attempt to access a disk when I insert it and asks me what I would like to do with it) great !
However once I boot up both my touchpad and keyboard are frozen. It boots up into XP fine and all my settings and icons etc are fine but I cannot do anything!!!

I spend the best part of yesterday cruising this forum (at work) trying to find a solution and tried them all when I got home.
New optical USB mouse is identified ok but still unusable:) , my Toshibia laptop does not have a PS/2 port and I do not have any external keyboard to try :rolleyes: , SAFE mode:exactly the same problem :-| , RESTORE LAST KNOW GOOD CONFIG: cannot get past logon screen to find out :mad: . The keyboard seems to work fine in the BIOS screen as I tried changing the boot order a few times, many reboots: no change :cry: .

I read that perhaps a XP repair would be in order and fix my problem.
Now I do not have this disk, the only thing I got was a system restore disk from Toshiba which will completely re-install and reformatt everything to factory settings (I have done this b4 and I don't want to do it again).

So come on people any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Please bear in mind I am a hardware engineer, I like to try these sort of things but I am no expert.:) Which is probably why there is a problem.

Thanks in advance.

James

i do not know your BIOS, cos you do not say what it is.... a tosh lappie, sure, but... Start up, hit Delete, enter BIOS, advanced cmos settings perhaps and check the mouse and keyboard settings there. dunno anything else you can try. In BIOS itself only a few keys are used, when Windows loads it loads the drivers you may have selected, or the defaults. Those drivers it is loading aint working for you. Maybe it isn't loading any!?

Hey Gerbil, Thanx 4 the reply.

Will try out your suggestions to check the mouse and keyboard setting in advanced cmos setup, although I am pretty sure that they are set to 'default'.

I will post anything interesting I find.
Cheers

i really am thinking that you must get your hands on an XP install disc - borrow one... because when windows boots it loads in the selected drivers for your keyboard and mouse as set by registry entries. If you could uninstall those drivers via the computer management screen windows would load the default drivers [which handle any keyboard basic operations]. But of course you cannot do that, so you need to load them from the XP disc via the Repair option. ie Boot from the CD [which you can do, naturally]. Am i correct in understanding tht your keyboard is frozen in the Windows Advanced Options Menu? If so, then booting from an XP CD is your only option.
Well, there is another one... buy or borrow any HDD, slap it in as master, set your original HDD to slave, use your install disc to put XP on the new disc, and then go in and fix drivers loaded in your slave. Somehow. Your chance to experiment.

Ok just to close this thread down I can tell you that I have done a clean install or more correct a 'restory to factory settings' from my OEM disk.

I tried alot of stuff e.g Repair install:did not get the 2nd repair option.
Then this http://webcast.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=8658&afterinter=true

Which I only got step 1 done then my laptop would not boot; But both my keyboard and mouse started working at this stage.
But all I could do was Ok this error message 'Issas.exe error When trying to update a password this return status indicated that the value for the cuurent password was not correct' then laptop would get stuck in a reboot cycle before I got to the desktop so I could not try any other detailed fixs for this out.


Then tried to get back into recovery console but my admin password was reported as invalid and made me reboot.

I had most things backed up and knew I would lose a few weeks of stuff and deceided just to bite the bullet.

Thanks for the comments anyway.

Cheers

the reason you didn't get the second repair option is because you were using an oem disk ,this only works with a genuine microshaft winxp cd .

I also got a 'copy' of an winXP pro disk from my mate and it also never gave me the 2nd repair option!!

I also got a 'copy' of an winXP pro disk from my mate and it also never gave me the 2nd repair option!!

If you hit enter the first time to install windows xp[insted of hitting the R to repair] you then should also then see a R for rpair after you hit enter ,to install winxp,as a computer repair person I do this all the time .

Sorry to disappoint....but the disk I had did not give me this option.
I see a list of options that read something like this:

C: Partition2 [NTFS]
Unpartitioned space

All I am offered to do is click Enter to install, D to delete partition, F3 to quit .

I wish it were that simple for me

Sorry to disappoint....but the disk I had did not give me this option.
I see a list of options that read something like this:

C: Partition2 [NTFS]
Unpartitioned space

All I am offered to do is click Enter to install, D to delete partition, F3 to quit .

I wish it were that simple for me

Not to beat a dead horse ,but its because its a OEM install ,the friends xp isn't going to make any difference unless you formated and loaded it ,then you would get the second R.the screen shots in this link show what it looks like ,
http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Repair-Windows-XP-t138.html

OK lets just say that the horse is well and truely beaten to death.

I had to do a restore to factory settings with my OEM disk (reformat and re-install) JOB DONE just had to reinstall all my programs ;-(

I have not re-tried to get to the repair screen (as I have no need to) but being an crappy OEM install I guess I will never get to see it?

Aside from this a bit I am having trouble validating my preistalled copy of xp, none of the product keys I have avaliable (on the machine and on the cd case) are correct.

It is the last time I buy a preinstalled version of xp. I had no idea what I was doing at the time, just needed a laptop. But I am learning now.

Thanks for your comments though.

Aside from this a bit I am having trouble validating my preistalled copy of xp, none of the product keys I have avaliable (on the machine and on the cd case) are correct.


Thanks for your comments though.

clik the phone it in section and they will give you the validation # or what ever it called .just give them the key # off the bottom of the laptop .good luck

a dead horse to beat! cannot pass up that chance. if windows is so busted on the HDD that it can't be recognised, then you will not get the repair option. eg. if boot.ini points to wrong/invalid partition, that sort of thing.... wrong number of partitions in bootloader code... no repair option.

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