Help-All USB Ports Disabled

Hello,

Need help! My niece was using my computer and couldnt get her mps player to work on the USB port. She went online to see how to fix the issue. It suggested she uninstall the drivers on the USB ports, but she disabled them all instead. I have no mouse, no keyboard and am unable to get past the log in screen because of it. Computer is a Dell 3100 running XP. Have no idea what to do at this point. I am unable to do anything other than turn the computer on and off. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Oops-I meant uninstalling the drivers on the USB ports

 

All that you can do, is use a older PS2 keyboard, vs USB to be able to reinstall the USB drivers. Removing the CMOS battery is not going to fix the issue with the OS, if something screwed with the Operating system files. All it will do, is reset the CMOS, but you will still have the issue that the HUD is still not correct.

Only real way to fix and easy, is to do a Repair install of XP, but you need the original discs that came with the computer. Bad thing is, if the Service Pack is higher than what is on the discs, it may not work.

 

Never stated to plug the keyboard into the USB port. May want to go back and re-read again.

 

Either way, if you swap keyboards, and can get into bios, or boot into SAFE mode, that means that there is no problem with the USB ports, but HAL. If they are able to get into the OS and do stuff, again, bad keyboard not HAL.

Another way to verify, is to boot with a Linux LiveCD, and see if it will see the keyboard that is attached currently. If not, try another. If it works with the other, then that means keyboard is bad.

Rarely does anything go wrong with HAL, unless people start messing with the device drivers, or try to do something unconventional. As for the hardware, yes those can go bad, but only way to find out, is trial and error with another piece of hardware.