No mouse pointer

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

A friend of my mum’s has once again ” Done something” to her PC. The computer is a W10 desktop PC and this time the mouse pointer has completely vanished.

I haven’t had a chance to phyisicaly look at it yet, but any ideas before I do ?

 

 

 

 

[Ed P]

New battery in the mouse?

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Sadly not, it’s a wired USB mouse and I asked her to try a spare she has too. I would have taken a PS/2 mouse around with me but I know they don’t work at all, her version of W10 was installed at the factory with no PS/2 devices attached so Windows did not install PS/2 support.

[Dave Rice]

I’ve heard you mention about the lack of PS2 support before and I’ve never found it to be the case.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

It sadly is the case with this PC and this installation of W10. About 2 years ago Microsoft had a mad half hour, which lasted about 2 months, where they thought it would be a good idea to save system resources by not installing PS/2 support on any system with no PS/2 devices connected. They patched that great idea away but it leaves any PC that was set up during that time in need of a Windows reinstall if PS/2 support is ever required.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

A news update is that the problem started after an AVG antivirus update asked if it was OK to install a filter driver. Nice to have all the information from the start 😆

Sounded like a keylogger and mouse input detection method detector gone wrong so I asked her to try a few key combinations on the keyboard and nothing at all happened, so keyboard input is stuffed too.

I managed to get her to the RE command prompt by force shutting down the PC 3 times and everything works from there so its most likely a driver issue.

[Ed P]

I agree it is probably the HID driver that has been borked.

FYI you should be able to use a PS2/USB adapter  in order to try your usb mouse. The USB spec is just a fancy serial interface at heart and common to the PS/2 interface..

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I have PS/2 mice and keyboards but they are just not detected under Windows on this PC, PS/2 and other ISA type device support is just not installed on this PC, not just the drivers, none of it.

MS, and at one point Intel, have been trying for years to eliminate ISA type IRQ’s and to use only message signalled interrupts. At this point we are basically down to just the system timer and PS/2 devices. MS thought they saw a chance to eliminate PS/2 if the PC had no devices attached during installation and handle the timer as a special case, that meant they could drop support for the rest of the ISA IRQ structure and neaten things up, in their eyes at least.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Oh, just to mention.

The USB and PS/2 interfaces are both serial and electrically compatible but the data packets are very different so unless your device is marked as Universal USB/PS/2 then it won’t work with a passive adapter.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Well I had a cunning plan.

I downloaded the AVG removal tool and put it on a USB stick, then I took it round and attempted to use it, no go though.

I started the PC in safe mode by force shutting it down a couple of times and then changing the startup option in the recovery menu but guess what ? No mouse or keyboard in Safe mode either !

This PC has been in need of a Windows reset for a while now so I talked mum’s friend into it and everything now works as it should.

I am going to be the villan in this piece for months because ” Nothing looks like it did ” but I can live with that.

[Ed P]

I’d guess that the person concerned just pulled out the plug at one stage and did a crash shutdown. If the HDD is ‘write-behind’ that is a sure-fire way of borking the registry and drivers.

However, I bet that you never get an admission of guilt. I don’t know what it is about computers, but most people will lie through their teeth rather than admit that they may have caused a problem.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Who knows Ed ? But at least now, as of this moment, the system is running a fresh, standard, install of Windows 10 😃

I will be getting called back because I made no attempt to setup things like the printer but there are no exclamation marks in device manager so standard Windows drivers will be in use.

One thing in my favour is that a Windows reset reinstalls all Microsoft store apps, including Office, and produces a list of any apps that were removed. I have a copy of the list and it is extensive !

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I have been looking through the list and I don’t think I have ever seen as many PUP’s in one place before 🙄.

[Author]

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