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jtreeves722Flag for United States of America

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USB Keyboard and Mouse will not work on Dell Dimesion E310!!

I have a Dell Dimension E310 that I cant get a Microsoft USB keyboard and mouse to install and use.  They do work when I enter bios but not in safe mode.  My problem is that its trying to load the drivers for the mouse and keyboard and since they arent loaded I cant click next on the found new hardware wizard.  I dont have a PS/2 port to use and Ive tried multiple other mouses i.e. logitech etc. and since I have no functionality of keyboard and mouse I can never get them to install drivers.  Ive tried to connect remotely within my workgroup but remote desktop is not enabled.  Please help because I dont have access to the original mouse and keyboard and have tried searching google etc.
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PawloA
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check your bios. Some bios actually will ask if the keyboard and mouse are disabled or enabled. You may have an issue there.
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Ive checked bios and its enabled.  The USB is working because its finding the "new hardware" the problem is that I cant click next in the Found new hardware wizard because my mouse and keyboard arent installed yet.  Ive also tried all USB ports on pc in the front and in the back.  It wont even load generic drivers for me is the issue
Does Dell only install Dell keyboard and mouse drivers when they install operating system??  Tell me that they didnt remove the generic drivers for USB keyboard and mouse that is incorporated within every other install of XP!!  The problem is that I dont have the original keyboard and mouse anymore...
I have seen this issue with many Dell machines, althought not common. Dell uses images on their machines when produced, but these images contain generic drivers for any usb mouse and keyboard. You can try a bios firmware upgrade and see if this works. As far as remoting in from another machine, that is easy. You can just download an eval copy of dameware which will allow you remote access, or just connect to the registry of this machine from another pc:
http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2004/05/04/serverhacks_remote.html

You might end up re-installing windows on this one. If you have another identical machine see if you can remove the hard drive and place it another machine to see if problem reoccurs. I worked in an environment with over 2000 dell machines, have seen this before. I had the luxury of having dozens of machines which were identical to test this type of thing.

But it sounds like windows does not find the hardware to load the drivers
Sorry, I forgot to append my last comment:  by remoting into the registry of this machine from the registry of another pc, you can change the registry key to enable rdp if you don't want to use dameware.

good luck
Hey bignew!!  I think we are getting closer but doesnt dameware require an acceptance by the user on the pc??  Im trying to connect with it and its showing bad username and or password.  Im not on domain if that matters.  Im in a workgroup.  Im having same problems with remote registry.
with dameware, the remote user does not have to accept anything. Once you are authenticated to the remote machine (using local administrator account), dameware installs a client. It only gives a popup box  on the machine you are conecting to
In the dameware username/password/domain boxes:
for the domain name use the hostname of the pc
use the administrator passoword
username: administrator
for the remote registry, when it asks for a password,
hostname\administrator   (local administrator password)
not sure what Im doing wrong but no matter what I try with either of the tools Im getting unknown username and or password.  I can see the pc in both programs and in dameware it says it connects then it immediately disconnects and says enter password.  With the pc it doesnt even ask for password in that it boots directly to the windows desktop hence me being able to see the screen where it wants to run found new hardware wizard....does there need to be a password for it to work??...I even ran an offline password editor to reset the passwords to blank and it still doesnt work...Ill keep trying unless you can think of another way around this...geez, all i want to do is connect any usb mouse or keyboard other than original one that it shipped with and it doesnt work...Dell is infuriating me....
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you can boot from a live cd, and remove files and drivers then :
ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V5.1.0CD-2006-12-30-EN.iso      Knoppix      
www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/                                     BartPe
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bignewf
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I ended up borrowing a dell mouse and keyboard from an account and that was the fix.  A repair proably wouldve done it also.