Keyboard Failure, unsure of problem

Tonight, I was in the middle of a gaming session when my computer began acting strangely. My character began to spin around crazily, as if I were holding down an arrow key. I tried to type, nothing. Tried hitting escape, nothing. Everything finally caught up, and I was able to log off.

I managed to log off that character, and logged on as another one, thinking perhaps there was something wrong with the game or my character. I noticed I was having trouble typing. Half of my sentance would show up, then it would stop typing and if I continued pressing keys the tower would beep at me as if the system had locked up. Every time it would do this, there would be a burst of actions, as if there was severe lag and the computer was recognizing actions half a minute after I did anything.

I logged off, checked my keyboard connection. All good, everything was connected. Tried logging on again, this time I can't enter any information to log on. Keyboard is not responding at all. I check the connection again, and it's connected correctly. I open a text document and attempt to type, and I get nothing. I try another keyboard, nothing. Try a roommates keyboard that is working on his computer, but my computer still doesn't respond to keystrokes.

When connected, my keyboard lights flash on for about half a second, then go dark . I have no USB keyboards available to me to try at this point in time.

The mouse works fine. I have a Wacom tablet and wireless mouse, connected via USB. I have a standard IBM type keyboard connected via the keyboard port in the back of my computer.

I rebooted, and recieved the "keyboard failure" message as my system was booting up. Ran Spybot, AdAware, AVG Antivirus, anything I could think of, and then rebooted again. Still no keyboard.

Checked system hardware, and it's not even recognizing the fact that I have a keyboard connected, so I can't run troubleshooting. I have no idea what to do here. Did a search on the internet, only thing I could find as a possible problem is a bad keyboard controller or a problem with the motherboard.

Not sure what type of information you need. I'm running Windows XP, have a Dell Dimension 4300, several years old. Please post if you need more information, and I'll post whatever you need. (Using roommates comp to post heh)

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

 

I am immediatly suspicious of your PS/2 controller on your MB. If it is flaky and acting up in the bios, obviously it has nothing to do with the OS. The best solution here is to get a USB keyboard to see if that clears up the problem. When you used your roommate's keyboard that is working, did it respond while in BIOS or just OS? Also, its a long shot but your mouse could be faulty in a way that it works itself but causes conflicts with anything else on the PS/2 ports (only reason I suspect this is I had the same thing happen to me 2 years ago, beat my head on the wall for near a week). Try roommates keyboard with roommates mouse and make sure they are hooked up properly. If that still is a no go to the BIOS then next step would be to attempt USB keyboard.