I own a Dell XPS 400 running Windows XP MCE. Over the course of the past month of so, I’ve had a number of issues with the remote control but I’ve learned how to manually short the remote, a process that seemed to work ok. Recently, however, I’ve had problems with my wireless mouse and keyboard (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&sku=310-4170&~lt=popup&~ck=ManRelated) failing to operate, sporadically. I’ve removed the USB receiver, restarted the system, plugged the receiver back in, and everything seems to be working fine…that is, until yesterday. This work around, if you can call manual shut downs and reboots a work around, no longer works.
Batteries are not an issue, that’s something i worked with very early on in my attempt to fix the problem. When I leave the receiver plugged into its normal USB slot, the receiver does not show any lights. I cannot remember what it showed when it was working properly, but I think, at the very least, the light under the antenna signal was lit. None of the other lights are lit — the ones for low batteries for both the mouse and the keyboard are not lit, and neither are the lights under the “A” and “9” symbols. Now, when i move the receiver to any of the other 4 USB ports on the back of my computer, the antenna light goes on (steady light). Now, back in its original position, if i reset the mouse, using the button on the bottom, the optical mouse flashes, as does the antenna light on the receiver, along with a very quick flash under the “9” symbol (after i click the receiver’s reset button — the process is described on the bottom of the mouse, showing that the mouse or keyboard should be reset first, then the receiver). If I try to reset while the receiver is attached to any of the other 4 USB ports, nothing happens and the light remains steady. Another interesting note, if the mouse is in any of these alternative USB ports at the time of start up, a “Keyboard failure” message appears before the Windows startup screen.
Now, the obvious solution seemed to me that I should simply try to plug in a non-wireless mouse and see if that worked. Unfortunately, any attempt to use a regular USB mouse has also failed, in both all of the 5 USB ports in the back of the computer as well as the 2 USB ports in the front of the computer.
Without anyway to interact with the computer, I’m at a complete loss here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.