No keyboard/mouse after startx
 

This is crazy. I am trying to help my brother get Slackware up from 700 miles away over an IM client. After solving a multitude of other problems over the last 7 hours, I am stuck on this one:

Once he types startx, KDE comes up but his keyboard goes dead and his mouse (both PS/2) doesn't work. He is running an old Intel 82371SB mobo (PII I guess) and no one in the Google universe seems to have had this problem. X wouldn't start before, cause vid card driver issues. Fixed that. Then his mouse wasn't configured properly. He got the old, no pointer error. Set it up as ps/2, /dev/mouse, etc and it starts but doesn't work. He also changed both the keyboard and mouse just for the hell of it, still nothing.

The mouse I can understand, but how can the keyboard work fine at the console, then not in X. The 8042 is the most standard thing in the world right?

# **********************************************************************
# Core keyboard's InputDevice section
# **********************************************************************

Section "InputDevice"

Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "Keyboard"

# Identifier and driver

Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"

So once X comes up, he has to reset because obviously ctrl+alt+backspace wont work, then there is nothing in the XF* log to indicate a problem. Not one (EE) message. I am going crazy and out of ideas.

Anyone got any suggestions?

<bump>
Little bro is still stuck and I am still out of ideas.

Anyone?