win 2k hangs on restart, keyboard/mouse become unavailable

[xjlkx]

Ok this is a good one -

I am running an Athlon K7-600 with and NVidia TNT2 32 MB vid card (everything else has been removed to eliminate variables)

The machine boots up with no problem.

When I attempt to restart, I get a black screen. This screen will stay there for 2 days if you do nothing.

However, if I jggle the mouse, the keyboard lights go on. If I then hit any key, the machine will restart - HOWEVER, I will have no mouse/keyboard when it has restarted.

This is a brand new install - no programs whatsoever. I have not updated yet. It may be worth noting that this does the same thing with an XP install...leading me to believe its a BIOS issue. I restored BIOS defaults, which did no good. The BIOS has been updated.

It seems like it goes into hibernation instead of restarting...but then I have no mouse/keyboard.

Have at it ladies and gentlemen.

 

[aquias]

I've seen something similiar to this (a week ago to be exact), it involved a a KVM so this may not work for you. I would pull off the keyboard and mouse, put new ones on and reboot the system.

When this problem popped up for me that's what I did (in a last ditch effort to troubleshoot the system) and everything came back to life for me.

Next up, do you have hibernation disabled? It's possible that the system is hanging on shutdown and then putting itself into a hibernation mode.

Lastly, do you get any error messages in the event viewer?

 

[bcastner]

What kind of mouse and keyboard - USB, a mix of PS/2 and USB?

Does your BIOS have any settings for legacy USB devices?

 

[xjlkx]

Sorry I didn't specify -

Both mouse and keyboard are PS2.

I will look into the errors in the event viewer.

 

[bcastner]

Can you make one USB and one PS/2 and test?

 

[xjlkx]

Ok, after restarting and getting no mouse or keyboard, I replaced the mouse with USB, and it worked FINE.

 

[bcastner]

You are very welcome.
Bill Castner

 

[xjlkx]

So I guess we'll just assume that the PS2 Mouse port went Kaput?

 

[bcastner]

A better assumption is that the PS/2 port standard is very inflexible, buggy, and does not like more than one device.

Seriously, PS/2 is a hack of a port, has other odd issues:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325975

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;262798

And is just a nasty piece of work. What makes it even worse is the solder connections to most motherboards are the size of pinheads, and heavily stressed by mice and keyboards being moved around and the cord yanking on them.

Hence, as I suggested above:

. resolve the duality issue by making one device USB
. long-term, avoid the PS/2 port