Have Epox m/board,1.4G Processor,80G HDD,5.1 digital sound card, 128G graphics, 256K RAM,DVD,CDRW. New just built. bought Microsoft Intellipro natural keyboard and intelli point mouse. Using M/SoftXP
Installed keyboard and mouse worked fine for a couple of hours, then died! Tried reboot several times, uninstall and reinstall still nothing.(yes did erase all files) Mouse eventually detected and worked through USB 2.0 but keyboard still unresponsive. Tried to install other keyboard Got( Windows root syst 32 ntoskrnl.exe error!fix for this error no use!) Cannot install any other keyboard. Doesnt work in USB port either. Can use another keyboard in USB if the Intellipro keyboard is also attached to the PS/2!!!! Tried keyboard on Asus motherboard(using M/soft XP) works fine!

Tried clearing the CMOS and BIOS makes no difference. Wondering if this is master boot prob!
Anyone know what is going on??????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:mad:

Reformat the HD, and reinstall XP.
If no luck, then the MB may be bad.

You can run the fixmbr from the recovery console - just go through the install sequence until you get to the welcome screen, and press R.
from here you can select the OS you want to recover. from there you can use the fixmbr command to repair a master boot record. there is a bug that will display an error message, whether there is a problem or not, just type Y to proceed with the fix. but you can also check on other things from the recovery console, including the devices attached.
Make sure you have the latest drivers installed for everything, as the HAL in XP can sulk if things aren't up to date.

Another obvious thing is to try the keyboard and mouse combination on another machine - it's not unknown for new equipment to be dead on arrival.

"worked fine for a couple of hours, then died"

I can't understand why the MBR would have anything to do with communication of a hardware port. (discovery in this case)

A starting point in understanding this problem is that when devices "disappear or die?" it is a matter of resource conflict. (unless the device has failed)

I wish I could be more help, but all I can say with certainty is that the masterboot record has nothing to do with this, and reinstalling operating systems as a "cure" is misguided.

A more likely scenario is a BIOS setting and or other deivce that is causing this enexpected behavior. (possibly mainboard setting as well)

and reinstalling operating systems as a "cure" is misguided.

It's possible that a driver was corrupted during the original installation of the O/S, and if so then reinstalling the O/S should fix the problem.

Have tried the above and still no solution. Have decided to concede and buy another new mboard!

Thanks for suggestions!:)