[mrmadcow]

I have a dell xps desktop that I dual boot ubuntu and xp sp2 on. On 2 occasions i have run into a problem where my mouse and keyboard will not work more than a minute or two (EVEN IN BIOS) regardless of what operating system i boot into. I miraculously recovered from this problem on one occasion after being out of the game for about 2 weeks.

The lights on my keyboard turn off shortly after startup yet my optical mouse stays illuminated.

Some of the things i did prior to getting my computer up and running the first time are
1 yanked cmos battery and drained it
2 took whole computer apart and put back together
3 cleaned the whole thing
4 removed things like hard drive, memory sticks, video card, fan, drives, and tried to restart but would still loose mouse and keyboard
4 stopped messing with it, turned it off and back on a couple days later and it was running like a champ.

my mouse and keyboard work great on other computers and other usb mice and keyboards dont work on mine

i have 6 usb ports and none will recognize mouse or keyboard for more than a couple of minutes but usually not more than 30 sec (even in bios)

On an odd note, even though my computer wont recognize my mouse or keyboard it will recognize my smartphone htc 6800 and my ipod. Do these devices not connect to the same part of the motherboard as my keyboard.
I have the same problem again and i dont think i will recover this time.

Any suggestions before i buy a new motherboard or computer? All suggestions appreciated.

If i do need to buy a new motherboard can i return the motherboard if it does not fix the problem.

Oh... and thanks for reading