Hi,

I've just received a call off an Auntie, who's asked me to help her with a problem she's having with Vista.

She's informed me that the problems first started with the mouse not working, escalating to the keyboard not working, with a message "Cannot load device drivers" displaying. A friend (Too far away to help) has told her that this was an issue caused by a recent windows update (10 or more days ago).

Has anyone else encountered this problem? If so, how may I fix it? Will I need a Vista disk, etc?

Thanks in advance.

do they work in safe mode? if it is an update you coule either uninstal it or roll back windows to before it happened. Are they both usb?

Both the keyboard and mouse must be USB, otherwise they would work. I've just found this on Egghead Cafe:

(From: windows vista hardware_devices USB Devices not not working or recognised following vista updates)
"I had the same problem. In my case the files usbstore.inf and usbstore.pnf
were missing in my \windows\inf directory.
I made a subdirectory in \windows\inf called usbstorage. I copyed this two
files from a XP machine and also COPYED usbstore.sys from
\windows\system32\drivers (thus the vista version)
After this I plugged in my MP3 player and it worked!! Also my navigation
device and my foto camera.
If you're also missing this two files, try this."

Could someone please explain more clearly what this means? His style of writing is kinda confusing to me. I have a PS/2 keyboard, so this should work, but I now need a mouse also. By theory I could just use keyboard shortcuts though. But how can I get the files on there?

does no one have a ps2 mouse or a usb to ps2 adapter you could borrow to make life easier?

I think the files are usbstor(they are on my 64 bit machine anyway). In theory if USBSTOR.inf and USBSTOR.PNF are present elsewhere on the system but not in windows/inf folder you could just copy and paste them from elsewhere. I personally would attempt a system restore to before the update. Incidentally has the machine got SP1 installed?

I would assume so, as it's been getting windows updates.

And unfortunatly, no. :P

My College threw loads of PS/2 mice out today. I should have taken one...

Thanks for all your help.

It might not have been offered as some machines system drivers are not upto taking SP1 and IIRC automatic update isnt installing it on those machines