Be Excellent To Each Other

My sisters laptop appears to have stopped responding to the keyboard or trackpad. She claims this was after a Windows update yesterday.

However I can't even get the thing to respond to let me into the BIOS or boot into safe mode to do a roll back.

Tried a USB keyboard to get it to boot into safe mode but no response there either. However once Windows starts a USB mouse does work.

This evening I only had about half hour to diagnose it. Next week I'll get more time but it's probably borked isn't it?

Angle grinder.

don't suppose you have a linux boot disc?

I assume you have tried last good known configuration?

If the mouse is working in safe mode delete all of the devices for keyboards and mice and reboot (device manager). It should put them all back and may load working drivers.

Was it a *real* windows update or one of those special ones she got emailed to her - or that popped open when she went to that nice site that was recommended to her by a Nigerian prince ?



I presume because the keyboard is not working - unless the windows update flashed something then its not going to stop the keyboard working to get you into the bios



Depending on the age of the machine you might need to set something in the bios to have it accept a USB keyboard :-)



It probably is - she hasnt spilled anything on the keyboard in the last few weeks ? (and since it wasnt immediately before didnt think to tell you ?)

Nah, she's pretty good about that sort of thing. I guess I can try a Linux boot disk as suggested next week.

As for rolling back as JC mentioned, the problem is that I cannot get it into safe mode to roll it back. Its as if the keyboard and trackpad are disconnected.

Will spend more time with it on Monday. Didn't really have the will for it tonight.

She does tend to use her laptops heavily and this one is probably 4 years old. Wouldn't be surprised if something has failed in all honesty.

It's quite a common thing. It's usually caused by a driver..

Sorry, I thought the mouse was working in safe mode. But still, go into the device manager and delete the keyboard controller and so forth then reboot.

If it's an aging install then it might work to reinstall it fresh. Mind you, if it's an aging laptop (and it sounds like it is) and isn't anything special then tbh it would probably be a better idea to just replace it instead of spending hours and hours reinstalling it. Depends how busy you are and how deep you want to get in I suppose.

PC's what are shit?

Aw, this is excellent.

The USB mouse works when it's running, yes?
If so, do a system restore, although I suspect it won't be anything to do with the Windows Update.

Rolled back, no difference.

Put a Windows XP DVD in the drive, and restarted. "Press any key to boot". No key would respond and it just started booting from the HD.

I guess I could take the back off and have a peek. But I think its borked.

Nah, Windows can't control things at that level, it's a hardware problem.
Does the caps-lock light work during POST?

Have you tried the USB keyboard in other ports? Does the laptop have a PS2 port (unlikely)? Are you able to take the drive out and test it in another PC?

I struggle to believe a Windows Update caused this, probably just a coincidence. Have you tried a USB keyboard as well as a mouse in it yet? If a USB keyboard works in Windows like the USB mouse you've tried does, the problem is probably being caused by something daft like a loose connection internally.

Have you tried flashing the bios?

No. They didn't.

BUT..... I just took all the screws out of it. Half an hours work, and not easy. Actually gave up because I couldn't get at the keyboard gubbins.

Just rebooted it to see if all the pulling and swearing at the case had made any difference and voila! It works fine!

Loose connection. Bad news is that it could happen again and I can't get at the connections to fix them.

I have a PC I'm happy with and that has never caused me grief, nor has my old one after eight years of heroic service, apart from once when I had to replace a graphics card and one other time, when a persistent virus made me decide to format the hard drive and start again. Ironically, on the one time I decided to properly get into this XBox Live malarky, the very day after playing L4D2 with Beex Peeps the box decided to stop reading discs any more. So it was back to ol' Windows for me. I appear to be living in an inverse universe.

Ah yes. There's a bloody good point. If a Pc breaks or goes wrong at least there's something the end user can do about it with a little know how. Bit different if you own a mac out of warranty...

Nah. They're just PCs on the inside. Sometimes they are hard to get into and the bits are in strange places, but I've had plenty to bits.

Can you buy replacement parts though? or is it all proprietory Apple stuff in there?

Mind you I suppose in a laptop it would be something on the motherboard and thus you'd be equally as screwed if something packed up.

Because my Mac Pro tower isn't basically just a very well built PC tower system with a different OS. Fact is it would be easy to fix because there's so few spec variations. If you look at one of the Mac specialists you can buy nearly every part from stock.

Compare that to when my home built PC case went wrong. I had to get parts sent from Hong Kong!

I see, so gone is the logic board yes?

Easy on the coffee, Yoda.

Fuck me ! this thing is immense !

http://www.applemacparts.co.uk/store/pr ... s_id=66275

With an immense price tag to match Mind you, why the fuck would you ever replace one of those? unless of course you added a second CPU.

It can be replaced by a user if required.

Although you can't flash it......

http://www.applemacparts.co.uk/store/pr ... s_id=66291

At that price I would want it to flash it's fucking tits.

Yes, Macs (iMacs and macbooks) are equivalent to PC laptops in terms of user-serviceable stuff. I.e., not a lot.

To be honest though, what are you going to "repair" on a big box PC if something on the motherboard goes wrong? You're going to change the whole motherboard, and probably the processor, ram, half the cards at the same time, aren't you?!

At least you can get a mac fixed if you want.

My iMac has been switched on 24/7 for 4 years now. I've opened it once to fit a bigger HD. Crosses fingers.

I have two of them already. Only a moron would have bought a single processor Mac Pro when I got mine, the price difference was negligible and you had to deselect the 2 processor option!

You can get them far cheaper, especially refurb.

Certain PC companies are like that. Alienware were notorious for it years ago. You'd go to their site, despec the shit out of a PC trying to bring the price down and save about 2p.

I took out the P4HT replacing it with a Celeron. Removed the keyboard, mouse, mousemat and so on and it was $22 cheaper. By removing a $300 cpu and putting in a $80 one. Crafty buggers

Am I only here to reign you fanboys in when you say dumb things?

Oh, sorry, just a bad experience with an out-of-warranty Dell laptop..
They do tend to be more worth fixing though, I think.

*shudders* I'm there now man. Not mine, only a work machine, but as far as Dell are concerned you can fuck right off.

Um... What did you expect?

And Dell will happily fix broken computers, as long as you pay them.

Just out of idle curiosity I had a look on ebay to see what my spec of 17" imac would go for these days. Over £400 seems to be the answer!

I am quite surprised by that. The machine cost me about £650 (newish refurb), as I say 4 years ago now. A bit of upgrading along the way, but still.

Macs hold their prices second hand to a degree that defies all logic and reason.

Same company I got my bogey Alienware from were selling them for around £200 in various spec/conditions.

I refer to the desktop lamp model. I had one brand new, lovely little thing really. Mine was the 15" though

Ah, that's the previous generation, before Intel. They do look nice but I can believe they're a lot cheaper now, as the latest OS has dropped support of PPC.

So they did those on Intel? or do you mean the Imac that started like with a G5? (aluminium & looks like a monitor with drive in the side)?

It goes:
Desk lamp "Imac G4" (PPC only)
White plastic monitor-only thing "Imac G5" (PPC or Intel)
Aluminium monitor-only thing (Intel only)
Latest one which is shinier (Intel only)

Mine is the white plastic Intel one. The PPC versions of it are a lot cheaper second hand, so the same will apply to the desk-lamp, despite it being a "design icon" if you like that kind of thing

The Imac lamp with the swing arm was the last Apple I got. What stopped me using them in the end was Windows XP Pro SP1.

Before that the only way to own a clean running stable PC was with NT4 and 2000. However direct X wasn't released for 2000 for bloody ages as M$ were being all snobby with 2000 and treating it as a business only OS. IIRC in the end someone actually hacked up DirectX 8 and got it running and then M$ carried on from there.

The allure of DX9 for me though (Doom 3 HL2) was strong enough to drag me back to PCs but up until then for about five years I had used nothing but apple (for irony I worked building workstations servers and el cheapo PCs in a business haha). I had enough shit with PCs for 9.5 hours a day to want to go home and continue. So I started with a Performa that was given to me with OS8 in about 1997, then brought the carbon ImacDV aswwell as a G4 pro macbook (close to £3k IIRC.. Them were the days where JC's brain still functioned well enough to be out there working and earning) and then onto the lamp shade thing.

I did have Pcs during that time. Most notably a Intel workstation with dual pentium pros, an Intergraph workstation running intel's 440MS (Marlinspike, dual P2 slot 1 xeon) and then the SGI 550 dual slot 1 P3 Xeon (866 IIRC with 2mb backside). After I didn't need that kind of power or size I went over to an Athy XP2000 for gaming

Doesn't that have software that isn't updatable anymore?

No. All Intel processor Macs can run all versions of OS X up to the current, and compatability with software under it flows from the OS version.

What Doc said. The PPC models have that problem, which is why I was explaining they're noticeably cheaper.

John, did you get into OS X at all or stop at 9? By all accounts X was a bit shaky in the early days

I used X Kalmar yes My lampshade shipped with X. 10.1? Jaguar, that's the bastard. IIRC it then went to Tiger and the guy I sold it on to put Tiger on it The G4 I had was one of the last and was clocked to 900mhz. I had a gig of ram in it too IIRC. Infact the CPU might have been 800? It was a long while ago now. The only problem I had with that computer ever was Apple's financing department who charged 29% APR. At the time I had no PC or computer and I desperately needed something. From memory I paid it for about 7 months and didn't pay off hardly anything, but thankfully (because I got it on a weekly special) I was only about $100 short when selling it to pay it off and tell them to go get fucked.

EDIT. Or was it fucking Panther I had? god knows. What one was first?

Mac OS X v10.0 "Cheetah"
Mac OS X v10.1 "Puma"
Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar"
Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther"
Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger"
Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard"
Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard"

I think mine started on Tiger and I've bought the two newer ones, no argument.

29% finance, bloody hell!