Dell Vostro 220 Mouse/Keyboard/Display problems

Appleby

Appleby

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Hey gang, I've got what appeared to be a simple problem that has me stumped. A long time customer dropped off a Dell Vostro 220 desktop and said that the icons were huge and they couldn't make them smaller and didn't know what to do. I assumed they had a resolution problem, which shouldn't be a big deal.

I plugged it into my KVM switch and sure enough it boots XP to the desktop and the Start menu is along the top border and it's HUGE. I'm talking HUGE. Everything appeared normal until it booted to the desktop. Then I noticed my mouse and keyboard didn't work. Sometimes my KVM will do this and I have to force a shutdown, restart and the pc will then recognize the KVM. I did that and still nothing. There are PS/2 connections on the back of the machine so I directly connected a monitor and a PS/2 mouse and keyboard. Booted...nothing, I have no response from either one? I reboot...same thing. So I plug in a USB mouse and keyboard. Same thing. Now I've got a the XP new hardware hasn't passed the Windows testing and compatibility warning showing for the PS/2 keyboard. But I can't accept the warning msg because, as I stated, the mouse and keyboard don't work.

I tired Safe Mode, same results. I'm at a loss here. The keyboard works during post and I even went to the BIOS and reset it to default settings using the keyboard, but it didn't help when booting to the OS.

Can anyone offer some advice here? I've attached a photo I took with my iPhone of what I see when I boot it up.


Keyboard%20Error.jpg
 
I had the same KB/Mouse issue with similar hardware (Don't remember the exact model, but it was a Vostro 2XX). It didn't have PS/2. I threw the book at it but couldn't get it working w/o a reimage. It had something to with the drivers for the devices not automatically installing or the OS not recognizing the devices as standard USB KB/Mouse (Not sure about the PS/2 for you). Do you get any new hardware boxes at start-up? Can you try remote desktop/registry to try and gain some control on the system. I even tried booting to a live environment and dropping a small java program into start-up that allowed me to send KB/Mouse commands over the network. Unfortunately, I couldn't click the Unblock when the windows firewall popup appeared. :mad:
 
Can you boot into safe mode as the Administrator user?
If so then rename the users profile, move it to another directory then reboot.

windows will force the creation of a new profile for the user.

if you can't boot to administrator in safe mode then use your PE disk and rename/move the profile.

might also be good if you boot to PE to use fabs to backup the profile.
 
ljtechservices said:
Can you boot into safe mode as the Administrator user?
If so then rename the users profile, move it to another directory then reboot.

windows will force the creation of a new profile for the user.

if you can't boot to administrator in safe mode then use your PE disk and rename/move the profile.

might also be good if you boot to PE to use fabs to backup the profile.
Click to expand...
Appleby said:
I tired Safe Mode, same results. I'm at a loss here. The keyboard works during post and I even went to the BIOS and reset it to default settings using the keyboard, but it didn't help when booting to the OS.
Click to expand...
There is no use of the keyboard and mouse in normal or safe mode. Even if you managed to rename/recreate the profile, you get to the login screen and can't click/select a profile to log into.
 
Thanks for the advice fellas. I think I'll try a linux live distro tomorrow and see what happens. This is just a bizarre one to me. The customer doesn't really care about the data and the computer has already been replaced so they just want to know if its worth repairing. I doubt they want to spend the money for a nuke and pave, so I'm trying to see if I can figure something out. And to be honest, I don't even know whats causing the resolution problem....it could the resolution set to something like 640x480 but it looks even bigger than that. But until I get use of my mouse/keyboard then I can't even diagnose the resolution issue.

I'll report back tomorrow.
 
Appleby said:
Hey gang, I've got what appeared to be a simple problem that has me stumped. A long time customer dropped off a Dell Vostro 220 desktop and said that the icons were huge and they couldn't make them smaller and didn't know what to do. I assumed they had a resolution problem, which shouldn't be a big deal.

I plugged it into my KVM switch and sure enough it boots XP to the desktop and the Start menu is along the top border and it's HUGE. I'm talking HUGE. Everything appeared normal until it booted to the desktop. Then I noticed my mouse and keyboard didn't work. Sometimes my KVM will do this and I have to force a shutdown, restart and the pc will then recognize the KVM. I did that and still nothing. There are PS/2 connections on the back of the machine so I directly connected a monitor and a PS/2 mouse and keyboard. Booted...nothing, I have no response from either one? I reboot...same thing. So I plug in a USB mouse and keyboard. Same thing. Now I've got a the XP new hardware hasn't passed the Windows testing and compatibility warning showing for the PS/2 keyboard. But I can't accept the warning msg because, as I stated, the mouse and keyboard don't work.

I tired Safe Mode, same results. I'm at a loss here. The keyboard works during post and I even went to the BIOS and reset it to default settings using the keyboard, but it didn't help when booting to the OS.

Can anyone offer some advice here? I've attached a photo I took with my iPhone of what I see when I boot it up.


Keyboard%20Error.jpg
Click to expand...

What about using the customer's keyboard & mouse? We had to do that with a similar machine a couple of weeks ago.

Rick
 
The customer has had this pc in storage because it's been replaced. They have several pc's and I doubt they could even tell me exactly which mouse/keyboard they used before. But...I can ask. The USB keyboard I tested is a Dell keyboard that actually shipped with a Dell Vostro pc almost identical to this one. Again, no luck.
 
Hey guys here is what I found...I popped in a bootable version of Ubuntu, fired it up and the mouse and keyboard worked perfectly. Obviously, we've got an OS issue now as someone else had mentioned was likely.

I'll pass this info along to the customer and see what they want to do, but I doubt they will want to spend the money for a nuke and pave. Thanks for all the help fellas, it's greatly appreciated!:cool:
 
This looks to me like a corrupted registry setting causing the computer to have to verify install of all drivers. This happens to XP sometimes. You can manually restore the REG to an earlier and hopefully un-corrupted time by booting from a live cd or windows xp setup recovery prompt.
From there, copy reg info from the same folder under system volume information to C:\windows\System32\config. Make sure you rename all to the correct names and you back up the old ones first.

You may have to do this a few times to find a good one/one that will allow this to work.

Your only other options are: N&P as repair keeps the reg intact, live CD and manually ajust the REG, or find the exact correct keyboard and mouse.

EDIT:

I did some more research, and it is not always a reg file, thought every time I have run across it it was.

Figure out some way of running the fix it in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822798

I just ran it on a Windows XP box that would not detect new devices without the unsigned driver issue and it fixed it.

You can see if it has a command line option and run it that way, or do some auto script then throw it on a CD with autorun or into RUN in the reg for a run on startup.
 
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