I recently started experimenting with Ubuntu 8.10 and I've spent the last week mostly getting the HDD partitions and desktop to my liking so I have not installed many actual programs yet. As of this last Saturday ( 11-29-2008 ) my Keyboard (PS/2 connection) worked fine whether booted into Ubuntu or XP and worked in grub as well. I discovered on Sunday the 30th that when booted into XP my keyboard no longer worked(but my USB mouse works). The keyboard still works fine in Grub and in Ubuntu but no amount of keypressing works when booted into XP. My device manager indicates the driver has been corrupted or something (Code 39 error) and indicates the driver files are i8042prt.sys and kbdclass.sys.

Here's a list of the things I've tried so far:

• Tried swapping in a USB keyboard;
• I've tried updating the drivers in Device Manager;
• Tried uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers in Device Manager;
• I tried the "uninstall driver, shutdown, unplug keyboard, reboot, shutdown, plug keyboard back in and reboot" routine;
• deleting those two files and letting them be rebuilt at boot;
• using the recovery console to copy them from the XP install CD to the System32/Drivers folder
• and as a last resort I tried a repair install only to find when asked to enter the CoA code the keyboard still did not work.

I obviously borked something on the Ubuntu side that's causing a conflicting with those drivers on the XP side but I'm at a loss as to what that might be. The only thing I can remember installing since the last time the keyboard worked was maybe Wine, but for sure I did a test install of my Baldur's Gate+ToSC disc and I attempted to install Daemon Tools Lite too. I've since uninstalled those two programs and even Wine itself without results. The only other thing I can think of is that I've been messing around with the /fstab file a lot trying to get all my drives/partitions to mount up at boot like I want but I don't know how that would impact the keyboard drivers. Before I totally wipe everything out and have to start from scratch I'd like to know I've truly tried everything so any advice/insight would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hi, try un-plugging and plugging the keyboard while xp is running.

The only other thing I can think of is keyboard encryption for wireless keys, like mine Logitech ex110.

Regards, Glenn

Forgot to mention I'd tried that too.

Okay so how do I check to see if that's enabled, since it obviously shouldn't be?

Only happens with the windows/logitech software when I change batteries.

I doubt it has anything to do with the hardware, just windows

run sfc from the recovery console to verify all the windows drivers

@ GlennsPref - Thanks for the help, but due to an unrecognizable windows partition I have effectively solved my issue by removing Ubuntu and re-imaging the Windows OS partition with an older backup image. I'd like to have figured out what borked the XP keyboard drivers in the first place and how whatever did it was preventing me from fixing the problem but with my backups this turned out to be the far more effective and expedient solution.

OK, no worries, Better luck next time.

BTW, when you install linux, a swap partition will be created,

possibly the unrecognised one you mention.