Windows 7: keyboard and touchpad not working

Hi folks

I hope someone can help me. My laptop recently became buggered by a virus and as I did not have a windows 7 installation disc I decided to restore it to its factory default using some sort of dell backup utility.

Since I did this my touchpad and keyboard no longer seems to work! keyboard works fine when i select f8 on startup as i can flick through the options however when i boot into safe mode the touchpad and keyboard still don't work.

I don't know what to do as I can't do anything without the keyboard or touchpad!

Any help would be much appreciated.

If you need any more info let me know.

Thanks

Linty

Try connecting an external usb KB and mouse to it and see if Windows will pick them up.

Thanks fr your reply. I've tried this in safe mode. It seems to say that the mouse has installed fine, however it doesn't work

In safe mode? That's not a great way to test any hardware... I would look in device manager for clues, your onboard keyboard and touchpad are likely to both be PS/2 devices... I would also look at any specific onboard manufacturer software for options to have caused these components to be disabled, I'd also check they're BIOS enabled whilst I was about things...

do you know how i would go about checking the device manager without keyboard or touchpad working?

i am currently running a system diagnostics and got the following error message

Error code 3500:021B
Msg: MOUSE/TOUCHPAD/PSTICK - Controller will not enable device

Thanks
Linty

I'd presumed you would plug in external devices...

i've tried doing this by just booting windows in normal mode however the mouse still doesn't work. haven't tried with a keyboard yet but i presume the same will happen. strange thing is that when i boot windows in normal mode it asks me for a username and password but in safe mode it doesn't.

do you know how i would go about enabling the touchpad as per the previous message:

Error code 3500:021B
Msg: MOUSE/TOUCHPAD/PSTICK - Controller will not enable device

i'm also wondering how I'm going to be able to retrieve the product key for windows if i wish to re-format it as it's not on my computer or on a disk!?

I cannot understand why you would have the same problems with both the keyboard and pointing device on both PS/2 (internal) and USB (external) interfaces. If you cannot make these devices function then you're going to need a restore image, and a second computer to clone it onto the laptops hard drive, in order to make it bootable and ensure everything works.

There is a questionmark here about whether in fact an internal connector has become loose.

At this point I would try doing the reload again as it obviously did not install correctly the first time. The restore image should have all the drivers that are needed.