Win98 mouse wont work and freezes on start up.

[trueman]

I have a win98 machine that gives an illegal operation error on startup and will lock up.
At first the error was to do with msgsrv32 but then when I went into start up and chose selective start up I rebooted and then I got an error as follows.

Explorer caused an illegal operation in module kbd.dll.....

Which I assume has something to do with the keyboard.
I also cannot get a mouse to work on this system even when booting into safe mode. Ive tried USB PS2 and PS2 through a serial connector. But it will not detect the mouse. Im guessing this is all related.

Any ideas, Thanks..

[trueman]

Okay I booted into safe mode and went into the device manager and there were heaps of doubled up entrys. Everything from 6 plug and play monitor entrys to 4 usb host controllers etc etc so I removed everything that was doubled up. Now on boot up the computer gets to the splash screen and wont go any further. It hasnt locked up in the sense that the wave moving across the bottom still moves and the hdd light is on constantly but after 5 minutes I gave up waiting and hit reset. I went back into safe mode and removed everything from the startup under msconfig and restarted again but still I gave up after 5 minutes of waiting.

The computers a 800mhz celeron with 128mram

Not sure where to go from here??

[stroyal]

What if you uninstall the mice or mouse and let it install on reboot?
Will the comp boot without the mouse plugged it?
Is the Mouse you tried in the serial port a PS2/ Serial Mouse.
A serial mouse can plug and play after boot.

[John Prophet]

a few things to try.

The basic easy way out is to reinstall windows "over the top" of itself...in other words..without formatting....I am pretty sure you can boot from the windows cd and do that.


also....you can boot into safe mode and run "sfc" and then choose "scan for altered files" and see if it finds any corrupt files..then restore them from the win cab files....(the win98 folder on the cd) (it will find "setupx.dll"..you canjust ignore that one, it always finds that one)


also....you COULD boot into dos mode and run "scanreg /restore" which will let you pick an earlier registry backup to restore to....that wont fix the original problem but may get you back to being able to boot etc


also...in safe mode you can run "drwatson.exe" from the run box..then the little icon appears in the lower right system tray and you double click it and it looks for any obvious problems...on occasion it can tell you what is wrong

[trueman]

The comp wont boot at all now even with the mice disconnected. I removed as much stuff as I could from the device manager hoping that windows would re-install what was needed on boot up but now it just gets to the splash screen and no further.
I noticed whilst in safe mode that this computer has Gain and precise time manager installed.
Perhaps its time for a re-format. I would guess that more than half the devices in the device manager are not needed and many are double ups for some reason. What do you think?

[John Prophet]

in this case you can boot to safe mode and run "regedit" and delete the "hkey local machine\enum" folder....

when you reboot it will tell you that your display settings arent correct and do you want to run the wizard blah blah..so choose "yes"

then reboot....that will delete the hardware entries and make it redetect and install all the hardware etc...as far as possible try to reinstall the hardware without rebooting...cuz it will ask you several times if you want to reboot etc.

Usually it will put a few things in as doubles so after you are thru you will have to delete both of the keyboard entries and let it find the one again...it usually finds the keyboard twice, the mouse twice and a "direct memory access controller" twice....so I usually delete BOTH of the doubled entries and it'll then find just the one.



Not a perfect method but it will work usually....by the way this is the same method to use when you get a new motherboard and want to keep the same windows install

[trueman]

John,

I have done exactly that, deleted the enum key, and it did install the keyboard and mouse twice. Before I did this though I deleted kbd.dll from the win>sys folder so I wouldnt get anymore error messages. It seemed to fix the problem.

The only problem I have now is that I cannot get the computer to detect the ps2 mouse.
Any thoughts on how to fix this??

Thanks for the help.

[caddmannq]

I've had systems that would not work with any PS2 mouse at all, (I had several to test with) until I removed some offending device. Once it was a modem, once it was a hard drive, once it was a CDROM.

I don't know why, but I just started unplugging stuff until the mouse worked, then started putting stuff back until it quit again.

That's how I figured out what it was.

[John Prophet]

Ok..first things first...go in the bathroom...look in the mirror...then slap yourself upside the head for deleting a dll, lol...at LEAST you could have just renamed it or put it in another folder or something.

But, all is not lost.....run "sfc" and then when it comes up click on "Extract one file from installation disk"..type in the name "kbd.dll" then type in the destination which would be the windows\system folder

That should restore that file and maybe the keyboard will work then..if not just boot to windows and reinstall windows from there.

[trueman]

Originally posted by John Prophet
Ok..first things first...go in the bathroom...look in the mirror...then slap yourself upside the head for deleting a dll, lol...at LEAST you could have just renamed it or put it in another folder or something.

But, all is not lost.....run "sfc" and then when it comes up click on "Extract one file from installation disk"..type in the name "kbd.dll" then type in the destination which would be the windows\system folder

That should restore that file and maybe the keyboard will work then..if not just boot to windows and reinstall windows from there.

Thanks John, But I dont have any problems with the keyboard. It always did work. It was the ps2 mouse that didnt work and that was before I deleted the kbd.dll file. I only deleted it as Im guessing its been installed with some fancy keyboard drivers which I was only using a standard keyboard.