Any idea what might have contributed to the problem? That is, can you think of anything abnormal that happened just prior to the kb and mouse dying?

Does the keyboard work long enough to let you get into safe mode during the boot process? If so, you'd at least be able to access your data.

In the worst case, you could pull the hard drive and install it as a slave drive in some other system. At least that you'd be able to burn your data to CD/DVD or copy it to the Master hard drive temporarily.

Put another hard drive in it, load Windows onto that, and then and copy the files across?

Put the hard drive into a system with a CD-Burner and copy the files to CD?

Edit: oops, beaten to the post! I'll run away now.........

:o

:mrgreen: thanks guys

dmr- dont know what could have contributed. the computer was my dads and was never used for a while. i will try what you said.

D-oh! Forgot to ask a rather important question:

Are the devices USB or are they ps/2?

sorry i was away. the devices are not usb they are ps/2.

I connected the second hard disk as slave to copy its files. another related problem came up however- I cant access the other partition of the slave drive.

The only drive that comes up is "Drive F".

If the partition you can't access is an NTFS partition that would explain Windows 98's inability to find it. You can, however, install utility programs which lett Windows 98 read NTFS partitions, and using one would allow you to copy the files across.

Try finding one in the results of this Google search

oh no- i forgot to mention- my master HD is win2000. i will look for the utilities either way though

If it's a Windows 2000 system drive, then it's highly likely you have an NTFS partition. Like with Windows XP, NTFS is the 'native' file system for Windows 2000

Is the drive recognized when you go to the Computer Management->Disk Management window in your Administrative Tools folder?