No USB/ Mouse/ Keyboard/ Bios Access

[tekhaze]

Repairing friend's old winXP Acer laptop and the Keyboard/touch pad doesn't work. Tried plugging in different external USB mice and keyboards but they only get power to LEDs, no data. Can't access Bios as a result or start a boot disk.

I would like to install ubuntu so they can use it as a facebook and youtube machine.

 

[BadBoyGreek]

Sounds like legacy support for USB in BIOS could be turned off. Have you tried a PS2 keyboard to access BIOS instead?

 

[tekhaze]

Sounds like legacy support for USB in BIOS could be turned off. Have you tried a PS2 keyboard to access BIOS instead?

Unfortunately, there are only USB ports. I have considered buying a USB to PS/2 adapter. Would that work?

 

[BadBoyGreek]

Sounds like legacy support for USB in BIOS could be turned off. Have you tried a PS2 keyboard to access BIOS instead?

Unfortunately, there are only USB ports. I have considered buying a USB to PS/2 adapter. Would that work?

Sorry, I had a blonde moment, you said laptop and I totally got stuck on stupid. Yeah it wouldn't have a PS2 port and an adapter won't help you much unfortunately. All I can think of at this point is that there might be a different key that laptop uses to get into BIOS. I assume you've tried Delete, F2, F10 etc?

 

[tekhaze]

I have tried entering the Bios using those keys to no avail. WinXP loads up to a password screen, but we can't get any data to transfer over USB mouse or keyboard, only some LEDs on these come on. I've tried each of the 3 USB ports, restarting the machine before every try, hoping one would allow access to Bios.

 

[tekhaze]

Just an update in case anyone happened to be curious... Was going to try hooking the HDD to one of my PCs and install Linux on it, but I can't since it's an old IDE type for laptops.

I'm researching an option of "hacking" into it via network. Since it's on WinXP, which is unsupported, there must be some exploits out there. From there, maybe I can install some driver support for USB keyboard and mouse?

If anyone has suggestions please comment!