Solved W7 VHD - No Keyboard Activity

[lehnerus2000]

I created a VHD of my old W7 setup using Macrium Reflect.

I attached it to my system and added a boot entry using EasyBCD.
It booted up as expected.

The mouse works normally.
However, I can't login as my keyboard doesn't work (USB and PS/2).
I can't activate the on-screen keyboard either.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

 

[Kari]

I have no solution or workaround for you at the moment, however I am wondering why you can't use on-screen keyboard if as you say your mouse works normally?

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[lehnerus2000]

I have no solution or workaround for you at the moment, however I am wondering why you can't use on-screen keyboard if as you say your mouse works normally?

I can select the option shown in your screenshot, but I can't figure out how to activate the keyboard, so that I can use it to login (i.e. no keyboard appears on the login page).

Update
I just compared my real install to the VHD.
The only Accessibility option that works on the VHD, is the high contrast theme option.

All the other options deselect themselves once the Accessibility window closes. :shock:

 

[Kari]

Lehnerus, please forgive me, I do not suggest you don't know what you are doing, I just want to be sure we are on the same page.

Is the below how you do it?

The screenshot from my previous post, here with more information (list numbers refer to corresponding numbers in screenshot):

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1. Click Ease of Access button
2. Tick the box (select) Type without the keyboard
3. Click OK

This opens, at least on all of my computers and virtual machines, in all Windows versions the on-screen keyboard:

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Notice that when the Ease of Access button is clicked when the on-screen keyboard was previously selected but not for some reason opened, the Ease of Access dialog looks like this:

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The on-screen keyboard is selected but both OK and Apply buttons disabled. In this case you need to first untick / deselect the on-screen keyboard, click Apply, tick / select the on-screen keyboard again and click OK. This opens the on-screen keyboard.

Kari

 

[lehnerus2000]

Lehnerus, please forgive me, I do not suggest you don't know what you are doing, ...

I didn't think that you were.

Notice that when the Ease of Access button is clicked when the on-screen keyboard was previously selected but not for some reason opened, the Ease of Access dialog looks like this:

View attachment 346223​

The on-screen keyboard is selected but both OK and Apply buttons disabled. In this case you need to first untick / deselect the on-screen keyboard, click Apply, tick / select the on-screen keyboard again and click OK. This opens the on-screen keyboard.

My dialogue window looks like your last screenshot.

I'll see if selecting/deselecting the on-screen keyboard option works and then report back.

 

[Kari]

Lehnerus, please forgive me, I do not suggest you don't know what you are doing, ...

I didn't think that you were.

Good to have that cleared .

It's always a bit problematic to reply when you know that the OP is an experienced senior geek.

 

[lehnerus2000]

I tried various combination of selecting/deselecting but the on-screen keyboard still won't appear.

The VHD also has a Guest account but when I try to use it, it starts to load and then I see the "Preparing your Desktop" message and then it logs off.

I also created another VHD from an image with no AV.
On another forum, I read a coment from someone who was having problems that were apparently caused by his AV program.
The new VHD behaves exactly the same as the previous one.

Strangely my real OS just had a BSOD.

I might disconnect the VHD.
I might just have to recreate my old setup on another HDD and try something different.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Defeated

I had to give up on creating a VHD/VM of my old (triple boot) setup.

Restoring the HDD images to a different HDD was also problematic.

XP had no problems starting (once I disconnected my 3TB HDD).
IMO, this points out the real reason MS wants to kill XP; it's bulletproof.

As expected, the so-called modern operating systems (W7 and LM17.1) both went "belly up".
The GRUB menu still worked though.
I find it interesting that the more "modern" an OS is, the more fragile it is.

Since I didn't need LM17.1, I didn't bother to copy it over.
I managed to fix the W7 boot issue using EasyBCD.

I'm giving up on this project, so I've marked this thread as "Solved".