I need help with a computer with only usb ports...

[blackecho]

I bought a used comp today from for around 20 dollars. It's a gateway, but i'm not sure of the brand. It's a small form factor, about 5 inches high, a foot wide and a foot long. It's got two small PCI ports, although they are really little and I don't think I've ever seen them before. Anyway, to my question. It's got 6 USB ports and a VGA out. What the hell?

I went out and bought a USB mouse and keyboard. When I start it, it boots perfectly into the bios (where the mouse and keyboard are both detected) followed by Windows 98. However, once it gets this far it gives me a message saying that windows did not detect a mouse. God. I hit enter on the keyboard to no prevail at the damn text box, it's not detecting the keyboard either. So I'm stuck looking at a warning box, unable to do anything at all. Any ideas as to what to do?

Plus, any ideas what's up with the PCI ports on this thing? Oh, it's a GateWay FlexATXSTC Bro.

Thanks!

 

[Rockn]

The slots you are looking at are probably AMR slots. They are pretty much useless and were generally used for modems. I would boot into safe mode and see if you gat any kind of use out of them. If you can go into device manager and delete the entries for the keyboard and mouse, reboot into Windoze and see if they are detected.

 

[JohnWill]

You might go into the BIOS and see if there is "legacy" USB support, perhaps that's required for Windows to see the USB devices.

 

[blackecho]

ok, i tried what rockin said and rebooted to no previal. but i'm gonna try the legacy thing now.

 

[blackecho]

also, i can't find anything to do with legacy usb in the bios.

 

[blackecho]

plus the mouse and keyboard work in safemode.

 

[Triple6]

Yup, I had this problem once with a Gateway. Ended calling up the customer and asking them to bring in their keyboard and mouse. Must have tried three different brands of mice and keyboards and it picked them up but you couldn't use them anywhere but in Safe Mode because you couldn't get the found new hardware prompts.

On another system, an ACER, found a workaround. Connect only the keyboard and it picked it up and installed the drivers; then plugged in the mouse and used the now functioning keyboard to get through the new hardware prompts. This might work on your Gateway, it didn't work on the one in my example though.

 

[blackecho]

coustemer support told me to reinstall win98... psh. gotta love them brilliant Gateway folks. there's gotta be some sort of work around.

 

[blackecho]

i'm gonna guess that yall've never ran into a problem similiar to this one, eh? i've searched google relentlsly, but with no luck. this is so stupid. grrr. makes me angry.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Howdy folks...

blackecho...


You might get around it like this, in Safe Mode in Device Manager -Keyboards - Driver tab - Update driver button - Don't let it search, choose Display a list - Choose the Show all hardware radio button - under Standard keyboards choose HID compliant keyboard...

Edit** had Update driver button in the wrong place...

 

[blackecho]

k, i'll try that. hope it works cause i don't really want to reinstall. thankx!

 

[Macadonious]

Blackecho....
One word for your puter...........



Dinosaur

 

[blackecho]

bwahahaha! it's not mine. i got it for my girlfriend who uses it just to surf the web and use word 97.

i myself have an alienware laptop along with an amd 64 desktop...

 

[blackecho]

and once again, no luck. ah crap! i think i'm just gonna put winxp on it and forget about it. stupid piece of junk... grrr...