Question : Problem: Can't do CTL+Alt+Del - Keyboard and Mouse not recognized at startup by XP

I need some suggestions.  My problem is that I can't do a CTL+ALT+Del sequence to get the system operating.  I  I have a Dell GX280 with a USB Keyboard and USB mouse running XP with SP2.  All hardware seems to be good as I can select booting and boot menus using the keyboard/mouse before loading XP.  I can also get into XP recovery console with a windows CD and keyboard works fine.  So I am convinced that the hardware does work.  Tried different USB keyboards and there are no PS2 ports on this machine to try a different keyboard.  I have even tried different USB ports and waiting a few minutes to allow XP to correct the ports.

I believe that this is either a HID driver corruption or a registry corruption.  I was hoping to boot the system and then go into device manager to remove the USB Keyboard/ mouse drivers and then reinstall them.  I can't the system booted enough so that I could even think about remotely logging in or even change to different restore point.   Any suggestions will be appreciated as I think I will have to reinstall XP.

Answer : Problem: Can't do CTL+Alt+Del - Keyboard and Mouse not recognized at startup by XP

DO you still have dell cd?

Changing Boot Sequence for the Current Boot
You can use this feature, for example, to tell the computer to boot from the CD drive so that you can run the Dell Diagnostics on the Drivers and Utilities CD, but you want the computer to boot from the hard drive when the diagnostic tests are complete. You can also use this feature to restart your computer to a USB device such as a floppy drive, memory key, or CD drive.

  NOTE: If you are booting to a USB floppy drive, you must first set the floppy drive to USB in system setup.

If you are booting to a USB device, connect the USB device to a USB connector.


Turn on (or restart) your computer.


When F2 = Setup, F12 = Boot Menu appears in the upper-right corner of the screen, press .


If you wait too long and the operating system logo appears, continue to wait until you see the Microsoft Windows desktop. Then shut down your computer and try again.

The Boot Device Menu appears, listing all available boot devices. Each device has a number next to it.

At the bottom of the menu, enter the number of the device that is to be used for the current boot only.

Boot from the dell cd if your keyboard and mouse are from dell reinstall drivers on the cd you can also run the test on the cd.