* Win 7 recovery mode but no mouse or keyboard ?

[out]

My PC is posting ok but when it goes to start Windows it shows a blank screen for around 30 seconds then eventually pops up with a screen showing a windows dialogue box entitled "System Recovery Options" and a question about "keyboard input method US" and a "Next" button.

Clearly something is wrong with windows, and it is smart enough to enter recovery mode.

The problem is that once it enters this recovery mode, it completely loses the mouse and keyboard. Both are USB and both are lit (keyboard lights and optical mouse) and working through the BIOS part of startup.....they only disappear when recovery mode starts. Without them I can't direct it to proceed. I am stranded.

I then tried booting with my original Windows 7 disk and same problem occurs! It opens a box giving me an option to install windows (note: not recover, which I thought was interesting), but again no keyboad or mouse control to allow me to proceed!

One other (possibly irrelevant) point: in both cases (recovery mode and bot from win DVD) the graphics are all weird. I know they are usually low res and very Win98-looking but this is wierder still.

Hardware (mobo?) issue perhaps? Anyone seen this before or have any suggestions how to recover from this? thanks


(win 7 64-bit)

 

[theog]

Try with PS2 keyboard and mouse.

Check your ram.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/715-memory-diagnostics-tool.html?ltr=M
Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

 

[out]

sorry - should have mentioned that I tried that.

Unlike on the USB keyboard, Numlock on the PS2 keyboard stays lit but it is completely frozen (it num lock and caps lock won't toggle)

 

[out]

update: interestingly, I have been able to boot with a bootable linux DVD. I guess this eliminates the question of PC hardware failure but why would linux boot with keyboard and mouse support but not even the windows install DVD ??

I can even access the windows partition without error so it looks like the HDD is ok.

If the initial problem was caused by the MBR wrecked/corrupted, that wouldn;t explain why the windows DVD won't boot but this linux disk will......