Hi,

I'm currently trying to fix up a computer for a friend that's running Windows 98. He claims that everything was working up until last Thursday when we had a thunderstorm (yes, his comp was surge protected). When booting up the system all of the tests pass and windows loads normally. However, when the login screen comes up (where it says "press ctrl/alt/delete to begin"), neither the keyboard or the mouse works.

No, it isn't the keyboard or the mouse because they keyboard and mouse that seem to be not working are the same keyboard/mouse I used to navigate to your site and post this message. There are 0 error messages, no beeps, the only thing I noticed is that once everything is detected/initialized (yes the keyboard and mouse are both detected), the Caps/Num/Scroll lock keys all continuously flash in unison (about once every second). The keyboard does work on the computer, because I can get into the BIOS and view all of the settings with the comp, just once it boots up that's it, no more keyboard.

Any ideas as to what is happening here? It is an older PC, did it just die?

If it has usb ports, try using them with a mouse & keyboard. that is if you're willing to gamble money away. No guarantees of course. But before you try that test the keyboard in your cmos area & see if it works there first. if you push delete, or F1, or f2 depending on the model of computer it is, if you even get into cmos, the problem is with windows, then find a way to re-install windows.

I ended up just reinstalling windows and that fixed whatever the problem was

thanks though.

I just got off the phone with my brother who had the same problem which is what led me here. He tried soft-booting and hard-booting with no luck. He then pulled the plug and let it sit for 30 seconds, plugged it back in, and all was cured. He has not had the problem since.