Vista - Mouse and keyboard randomly freeze up. (Vista Home Premium 32 bit)

Mouse and keyboard randomly freeze up.

Acer E700
Q6600 Core 2 Quad
ATI x1650
2 Gig RAM
USB mouse & keyboard
Vista Home Premium

I have the problem with the system fully updated, and after a base install with no updates.

The problem started 3 days ago and have had the PC for 2 years without this problem. I have not added anything to the install recently that would cause this problem. I have done automatic updates from Microsoft, but as stated above, problem persists from base install to fully updated.

Problem persists in safe mode.

I have edited the registry "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ i8042prt \ Enum" and set the value of INITSTARTFAIED from 1 (enabled) to 4 (restricted). Sadly this did not fix the problem. I tried this in response to Event ID 7026.

Here is a partial listed of my Device Manager;

Human Interface Devices
HID-compliant consumer controlled device
HID-compliant consumer controlled device
HID-compliant consumer controlled device
HID-compliant device
HID-compliant device
HID-compliant device
USB Human Interface Device
USB Human Interface Device
USB Human Interface Device
USB Human Interface Device

(If I uninstall one of the "HID-Keyboard Device" from the "keyboards listed below, then the above list is cut in half.) (Also when my keyboard cuts off the "HID-compliant consumer controled device" will double to 6 instances.)

Keyboards
HID-Keyboard Device
HID-Keyboard Device

(I have one keyboard plugged in. If I delete the bottom "HID-Keyboard Device" nothing happens. If I delete the top "HID-Keyboard Device" it kills the keyboard.

Mice and other pointing devices
HID-compliant mouse

(I have not messed with this.)

One more note on the Device Manager, if I rapidly move my mouse around it increases the "freezing" and when this happens, the Device Manager tree will collapse and reopen. It is like the mouse and keyboard are flopping back and forth on and off.

One other curious note is, sometimes when I touch my keyboard (not the keys) the light above my Num Lock will go out and the keyboard will be dead... just to come back on after a couple seconds. But this is random and may have nothing to do with me actually touching the keyboard. But it does happen enough to make me wounder.

I also ran sfc /scannow but it found nothing wrong.

I have tied a USB to P/S 2 converter for the mouse and keyboard, but my PC will not recognize it.(may have to change a BIOS setting for this to work.)

So I am completely out of ideas. Any of you have some?

Thanks in advance.

P.S. It has been a pain trying to type all this with the mouse and keyboard cutting out every minute or so!!!

Have rep for being a determined and methodical troubleshooter

Does the "mouse and keyboard cutting out" symptom also occur if you don't boot to Windows at all? For example, press 'del' during the POST to enter the BIOS config and stay there long enough to determine whether the same keyboard issue is evident. Alternatively, boot something like Knoppix or another OS from a CD (or USB or even a floppy).

If the same symptom is evident, I think you could safely conclude that a hardware-level problem is certain. If not, it would be interesting to hear back from you as there are other troubleshooting steps you could take if the issue is specific to Windows.

WOW, great ideas... thanks! I have a copy of Mandriva I can boot to, I will give that a try when I come back home later. I will let you know what happens.

Could you tell us what make the keyboard and mouse are?

Stock Acer mouse & keyboard.

ISSgod

Im a bit dense this morning, so bear with me. I assume you have installed drivers for the chipset, bios, etc.

Can you check device manager (type device manager in search) and check if there are any unknown devices.

Ken

Edit: could you fill in your system specs (lower left corner) so we know what hardware you have. thanks in advance

Thanks for the response Ken.

Updated my sys specs... but... when I went to Acer to get the white papers on my sys, they were in what I would guess to be Russian... and sadly I do not read Russian. So I will have to crack the case sometime to get the motherboard info.

Device Manager reports all are identified and working well. I have had a very close eye on the DM for the last few days.

All is up to date with the exception of the BIOS. Will update that as a last ditch effort. PC has run fine off of the current BIOS for 2 years, so not sure why it would be any different now. Remember, I get this problem after a clean install to fully updated and patched. But with all that said... it could be the BIOS... Oui, trouble shooting can be like looking for a needle in a stack of needles!!!

Robert

Off topic, but so far we all have cat Avatars. Mine is my default Tabby playing a Charvel on a Marshall Stack.

Alright, Mandriva failed to load. It was stuck on finding, loading, failing, and disconnecting the USB devices over and over... I assume mouse and keyboard issue.

So what does that leave me with? Mouse and or keyboard causing the issue. Motherboard issue. BIOS issue? Could it be anything else?

I am going to try to run my mouse and keyboard through the P/S 2 connection with a converter again, will have to change a BIOS setting first. But first I should try to run my mouse and keyboard through my laptop and see if they work there. They have in the past.

update your drivers