# suddenly no keyboard during boot, no mouse ever[solved]

## dcljr

I've been running a standard X86 desktop system on "gentoo-sources" kernel 2.6.26-r9 for about a year now (I know, it's really old and needs to be updated, but I just haven't gotten around to it!), and I haven't emerged anything or changed any configuration files in months...

So, lately I've had the need to periodically disconnect my system (power, monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse) and then put it back together again after a short while (matter of a few hours).  I've done this a few times with no problems.

Suddenly, tonight when I hooked everything back up, the keyboard wasn't working at bootup, and then when I got to the GDM login screen, I had a working keyboard again but no mouse.

I've tried several obvious things, like rebooting, unplugging and replugging the keyboard and mouse (separate, but they plug into the same component, apparently, on the motherboard).  I also tried switching out my optical mouse for my older "roller-ball" mouse, but that doesn't work, either (I mean, there's nothing wrong with either mouse, but suddenly they aren't working).

Unfortunately, without a mouse, it's going to be almost impossible to cut and paste any configuration info here.  I guess I'm lucky to have use of the keyboard at all, although not having a mouse makes web-browsing very annoying, and some things pretty much impossible, I've found.

Anyway, the only other pieces of evidence I have to go on are (sorry for the lack pretty formatting):

1. The computer boots as usual, but the three lights above the numeric keypad on the keyboard flash twice, whereas I think they used to only flash once.  I think it also "clicks" at this point, which I don't think it ever did before. After the requisite memory check, IDE drive check, etc (don't know what all it does), it then clicks again just before the kernel menu appears, which it also never did before.

2. As stated above, the keyboard doesn't work during the boot process (can't hit DEL to get into BIOS, can't select the kernel to boot to without waiting for the countdown to finish), but it does work once I get to the GDM login screen (and, of course, in my Gnome desktop session, which is how I'm able to type this up and submit it in this forum). I don't know if this is unusual, but in "/dev/input" I'm seeing entries for "event0", "event1", and "event2", and the link in the "by-path" subdirectory is pointing to "event2". (I also have a "mice" entry, but see next item.)

3. The mouse doesn't seem to ever work (as a pointer), but it is receiving power, which I can tell because my optical mouse is "lit up" when plugged in. I get nothing, however, when I "cat /dev/input/mice". I don't see a mouse driver being loaded in the output of "lshal", but I used to see "info.linux.driver = 'psmouse'  (string)" when things were working.

4. BIOS: Licensed Award BIOS, ver. F5, 10/01/2004, Pt# 6A6LYG0Z. Motherboard: GigaByte 7VT600P-RZ with VIA KT600 North Bridge, VIA VT8237 South Bridge. (And not that it matters, I guess, but the CPU is a socket A AMD Sempron 2500+.) Keyboard: Dell RT7D20 (104-key). Mouse: Micro Innovations Optical Mouse PD430P. 2nd Mouse: Microsoft IntelliMouse 1.1A -- both mice are corded and PS/2 compatible, but I'm using HAL to detect the keyboard and mouse, as recommended (/forced) in Xorg Server 1.5 (and 1.6, which is what I'm running), with no InputDevice sections in "xorg-conf". (But like I said, this just suddenly happened "for no reason" today, and nothing has changed since I last booted up before the problem started, so I can't believe it has anything to do with configuration files. It's gotta be either a physical [i.e., motherboard] problem or something in the BIOS, right?)

So, does anyone have a suggestion for what I could try/check?  I really don't understand why the mouse would suddenly stop working (any mouse) and yet the keyboard only stop working during bootup.  Ideas?

 - dcljrLast edited by dcljr on Fri Aug 27, 2010 6:20 am; edited 1 time in total

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## DONAHUE

dead mouse?

dead or partly dead ps2 bus?

borrow a mouse, preferably usb or serial and see if symptoms change. 

emerge gpm if you haven't so you can test mouse in terminal.

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## drutten

Did you BIOS get reset at some point?

Try borrowing a keyboard and look for an option in bios called "enable USB-keyboard" or something.

Are your current keyboard and mouse USB or PS2?

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## gerard27

Boot with a livecd of any kind and check mouse and keyboard.

Gerard.

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## dcljr

Turns out my problem was "capacitor plague" (see the Wikipedia article of that title). I didn't actually find this out until my desktop graphics started going wonky and forced me to further investigate the problems I was having (I'd been suffering with keyboard emulation of the mouse up till then).

Two capacitors on the motherboard had burst and leaked out onto, respectively, the heat sink of the CPU (not as bad as it sounds because everything is on its side in the case, so the leak was onto the side of the heat sink where it could do no real damage) and the corner of the graphics card. The latter issue was what finally rendered my computer useless.

I'm probably going to be opening another thread here real soon, because I bought a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM, and it's taken me a couple of days to get things working enough to actually be able to get to a command prompt and go online! (Typing this in a 'links' text-only session from an AMD64_minimal installation CD.)

Next stop: Try to boot into my old system! (Will be "stealing" the kernel from this CD session for the attempt... let's see if this CPU really can run 32-bit AMD executables [the ones already on my hard drive, I mean], as it's supposed to....)

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