Client disabled all USB devices in Device Manager

[Scales]

Trying to wrap my head around this one. One of my clients has disabled all usb ports somehow via the Device Manager and I have no inputs on the system.

Newer HP desktop Windows 8.
No PS/2 ports or serial ports on the motherboard.

Have been looking around online and remote registry with no solution so far. Maybe someone has resolved something like this before or maybe I am missing something obvious.

Thanks

 

[Larry Sabo]

USB drive cleanup utility. This should help: http://www.techspot.com/community/t...up-and-remove-old-usb-storage-drivers.145884/

Edit...

I have no inputs on the system.

Oops! That kills my suggestion, unless you have remote access.

 

[Markverhyden]

How do you know they were disabled via DM? Did they give a detailed explanation of how they did this or why? What other troubleshooting steps have you done? You can enable/disable USB, as well as other hardware via regedit, which includes remote regedit. Open the registry for the target machine, HLM>System>CurrentControlSet>Services>usbstor. Value of 4 disables, value of 3 enables.

 

[Scales]

How do you know they were disabled via DM? Did they give a detailed explanation of how they did this or why? What other troubleshooting steps have you done? You can enable/disable USB, as well as other hardware via regedit, which includes remote regedit. Open the registry for the target machine, HLM>System>CurrentControlSet>Services>usbstor. Value of 4 disables, value of 3 enables.

Client had said they turned them off in the device manager, was trying to disable one. That regedit entry is set at 3.

 

[Archon Prime]

Perhaps they uninstalled the USB Mass Storage Drivers?

 

[Scales]

The usbstor keys are normally used to allow or forbid connection of storage devices via USB; from the sound of it your client has turned off the USB ports completely, so that even the keyboard and mouse won't work - otherwise he/she could just of back into Device Manager and turn them back on. Is that right?

Sounds right.

 

[PBComputer]

Customer did this I got them to force a shutdown and started it up again and it reinstalled the druvers

 

[Scales]

Managed to get to system restore. Face palm... HP has a boot menu option to the recovery console I did not see. Thank you everyone.