After doing a bit of online reading, I found an article from Microsoft that advised me to uninstall the USB Host Controllers under USB Serial Bus Controllers in Device Manager. After that, you just have to restart your computer and Windows should find the hardware again and install it. Well, not exactly. I’ve done this before and normally it works just fine, but this time around my luck failed again and instead of having that one dead USB port working again, all of my USB ports were dead! ..
The funny thing was that the USB mouse and keyboard worked fine in the BIOS, but when I loaded a different operating system on my dual boot system, it would kill all power to the USB devices.
After reading several help articles that said you need to uninstall a driver or click on this to regain access to your computer, I was beginning to feel like I was going crazy. After about an hour of trying different things, I finally found a solution that worked for me. The USB port on my computer is still dead, but that’s another story for another day. In this article, I’m going to go through the different steps you can take in order to try and regain access to your system if you currently have no mouse or keyboard access.
Method 1 – Try PS2 Ports
If you’re like me and only have USB ports, then you can’t just attach a PS2 keyboard and mouse to your computer. You need to find an older keyboard and mouse that still has PS2 ports so you can use them to gain access back.
Method 2 – Check the BIOS
Windows 10’s pre-boot environment is designed to help you troubleshoot USB issues. If your USB device dies when Windows starts to load, it may be enabled.
If you want to use a USB keyboard while in the BIOS, be very careful not to change the USB settings to “USB Disabled”! If you do that, then you won’t even be able to use your USB keyboard and you’ll really be in trouble. The only way to enable a USB keyboard after your disabled USB in the BIOS is to either use a PS2 mouse or remove the CMOS battery off the motherboard! Unless you want to be taking apart your computer, definitely don’t disable USB if you don’t have any PS2 ports. If USB is enabled, which it probably will be, then move on to the next method. ..
Method 3 – System Restore
This is the method that finally worked for me. I was really lucky because I had just installed a program the day before and Windows created a restore point for me automatically. Hopefully, you didn’t disable system restore on your system because if you did, you’re going to have to take more drastic measures to get your keyboard and mouse working again.
If you have a dual boot system or a multi-disk system where you have to choose which drive you want to boot from, go ahead and select that OS or disk from the list and the instant after you press Enter, press and hold the F8 key. That should get you into the Windows 7 Advanced Boot Options dialog.
You can choose to Repair Your Computer, or try to fix the problems that are causing them. I tried logging into Safe Mode, but the keyboard and mouse still refused to work, so that was a dead end. Now you’ll see a list of system recovery options.
Click on System Restore and you’ll get a dialog box where you can select a restore point. You obviously want to pick one that was created before your problem occurred. By default, it will pick one for you, but you can choose a different one if you like.
If you have a restore point, then restoring your system should be a relatively easy process. If you don’t have a restore point, then your best bet is to try and find a PS2 port or use system restore. There are some last resort hail-mary options I’ve listed below. ..
Method 4 – CMOS Battery
Remove the CMOS battery from your motherboard. This is not as bad as it sounds.
Method 5 – Repair Install Windows 7
If you don’t have a restore point, then the last resort option is to perform a repair install. This will replace the mouse and keyboard drivers with the original ones and you should be working again. A repair install will simply re-install the Windows OS, but will not delete your data.
Windows 10 is a great operating system and it’s better than Windows 8.1 and Windows 7. However, there are some things you need to do in order to make the most of it. One of these things is to install SevenForums, an awesome tutorial that walks you through the whole process and explains all the caveats, etc.
Method 6 – Refresh Windows 8
If you’re using Windows 8, you might have a bit more luck. You can try to Refresh the PC, which is a new option in Windows 8. Read my previous post on how to perform a refresh on Windows 8. In order to do that, you’ll first need to get into the Windows 8 System Recovery Options dialog.
You can read the repair install guide for Windows 8 created by EightForums, the same site as SevenForums, just for Windows 8 stuff. Again, you don’t lose any data, but you should have a working mouse and keyboard again. ..
We hope you can get access to your computer using one of the methods above! If not, please post a comment here about what you tried, where you got stuck, etc and we’ll try to help. Enjoy!
