"Frozen Mouse" How to start PC or Recover Personal Data Files

[Hans Brinker]

    

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Note: See solution for data file recovery in the last posting of this series!

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Upon starting Windows XP 2002 on my laptop today, the mouse pointer appears to be fixed in position and does not happen to be inside the password box. Hence, I cannot type in my password! I tried two different extenal mouses, to no avail. (I am typing this on a older PC).
Needless to say that I have carried out a few shutdown (using power button) start-up cycles, with long (30 min) power out intervals but this did not make any difference.
I also tried to start-up in Safe Mode using the F8 key. The options I tried there so far all still required to use the mouse.
Also tried to start-up using the original Windows disks; still led to only options where I had to use a mouse.

I would like to prevent to have to reinstall windows and all other software.
Does anyone have any advise?

Your help is greatly appreciated,

Hans

[SteveW]

Hans,

Were there any hardware or software changes made to the system before this started happening? Installed new hardware (however trivial)? Make any hardware configuration changes? New antivirus software? New any other kind of software? Driver updates? Windows Update? Downloaded update of any software like Adobe Reader, Firefox, etc.

Did your antivirus program give any kind of alert recently?

What kind of mouse is it? I assume the laptop one is built into the keyboard. Is the external one USB?

In many places in Windows, other keys can be used in place of the mouse even in some situations where you wouldn't expect. Try the keyboard TAB (and SHIFT+TAB) and arrow keys (left, right, up, down). I think I have used those to shift the focus among the various Users on my login screen. If you can get objects highlighted by using the keyboard keys instead of the mouse, the ENTER key acts the same as a mouse click. The space bar can toggle checkboxes.

If you find that the keyboard keys are doing useful things, try all the things you tried previously, but using TAB, arrows, space bar, and ENTER instead.

Even at the login screen, I believe I once discovered that I could type CTRL+ALT+DEL and it would bring up another screen different from the login screen, where I could do something useful. I don't remember what that screen was. (The problem I had at the time was slightly different: I could move the mouse, but clicking on the password box wouldn't make it active, so I couldn't enter my password. The problem was caused by my at-the-time new antivirus software.)

You also might try pressing the Windows key (if the keyboard has one), and then ESC.

I realize that the first problem is getting logged in. You can't do much diagnostics until you can achieve that.

[Hans Brinker]

Steve,

Thanks for your quick reaction.
What I did before this happened? I think the most significant ones are the following, although they seem to be completely unrelated.
- I wanted to copy a 900 MB BestCrypt container from this (older) PC to the Laptop (the one with the frozen mouse).
I tried two different flash memory drives, but the laptop did not accept the copied container (It did in the past).
- Note that both these flash drives were used numerous times on this laptop and never gave any problems.
- I found that new containers could no longer be generated on the laptop (or maybe even introduced) since the "temporary license had expired". Since I have the license, I decided to uninstall the BestCrypt application (v.7.07.6) and reinstalled it using the license. After that was done (that appeared to go without any unusual events), an earlier BestCrypt container (which had given no trouble before) was no longer recognized and a message came up (during Windows start-up) that BestCrypt could not launch. Attempts to start up BestCrypt.
- I realized that I had not rebooted the laptop after the intial reinstallation of BestCrypt (was not demanded) and decided to repeat the uninstallation and reinstallation of BestCrypt but now each step followed by a reboot. I am not sure I made it completely through these steps or not, but after the last reboot the mouse was frozen!

I am currently going through the Dell Diagnostics program in the hope that this recovers the problem. Nothing so far, but still running.
Will let you know how your suggestions work out.

Thanks ,

Hans

[Hans Brinker]

Steve,

I should add that I did not do any upgrades these last days.

Hans

[Hans Brinker]

Steve,

The Dell Diagnostics test did not reveal or fix anything.

Back to your questions:
- Yes, the mouse pad is built in.
- The two external mouses are both USB.
- Anti-virus program (McAfee Security Center) is updating automatically when online did not give any alert recently.
- I tried all permutations of Shift, Tab and Arrow and Enter keys: No effect on mouse pointer.

Via F12, I did manage to get into the BIOS, will try to see whether I can unable and re-enable the mouse pad.
Any ideas there?

Thanks for the help,

Hans

[SteveW]

While you're troubleshooting, make sure the flash drive isn't connected. I found one report where a flash drive froze the mouse pointer but released it when the drive was removed.

Also disconnect all other devices connected to USB or other ports.

The 3 possibilities that come to mind at the moment are

1) maybe the mousepad has failed and for some reason the drivers can't load if there's a malfunction. I don't think this is very likely.

2) "something" about the flash drives. I don't know anything about flash drives, though. Can they short something out when they're plugged in, or anything like that?

3) It sounds like the BestCrypt program is configured to auto-load as Windows starts up. Maybe it is even a service. If its installation wasn't complete or its configuration became corrupted, it seems possible that it could hang up or cause other problems at startup. Given the events you related, this sounds like the most important thing to investigate first.

I see on the Jetico website that the license includes free support. I'd contact them, tell them what happened, and ask if they have any ideas how to troubleshoot.

Your comments about the "BestCrypt could not launch" glitch and "after the last reboot the mouse was frozen", are what make me think the BestCrypt installation is the most likely suspect.

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There are startup options for Safe Mode and I think Safe Mode With Networking (or something like that).  I haven't checked, but is there any option for "Command" or "Console" mode where there's no Windows GUI, just a C:> prompt?

If you can get to a C:> prompt by any means, you can type: msconfig. It is a program where you can specify startup options. It's a bit complicated, but on one of the tabs, if you can find BestCrypt listed as a startup program, you can uncheck its box so it doesn't auto-launch.

Since you're at least getting to the Windows Logon screen, I wonder if you could log in to your laptop by connecting a 2nd computer to it through one of the ports. That might be a way to get a C:> prompt (on the 2nd computer). I don't know how to do that, though, so it's just a general idea.

[SteveW]

When I started my PC today, I experimented at the logon screen.

Pressing TAB twice put the character cursor in one of my account logon boxes where I could enter the password without using the mouse.

After I'd gotten the cusor into one of the password boxes, I could move to other account password boxes with the Up and Down arrow keys.

Pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL at the logon screen, waiting several seconds to see if anything happened (it didn't), and then doing it a second time brought up a small dialog box for logging on, with the caret already positioned inside the password entry box.

None of these things moved the mouse cursor. They were just ways of getting the text insertion point where I needed it to be, without having to use the mouse to get there.

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This is getting ahead of things, but I know of one person who had to use a Dell Windows XP system or restore CD (it was called something like that) to reinstall XP. He thought the reinstallation was going to delete all his files and start with a completely wiped disk. But it turned out it didn't do that, and he ended up with the files still intact. It's probably best not to assume that will be the case. Different systems might be different. But if you have to go to that last resort option, there is still hope that all won't be lost. Even so, I'd suggest trying everything you can possibly think of before resorting to a system reinstall.

[Hans Brinker]

Steve,

Yesterday I removed the HD to a USB connected E-Z Data Transfer unit (by CMS) which allows use of the HD as a stand alone drive.
Will have to put it back to do that precise test, but I did similar things with tab and arrow keys before without success.

I did load the original Windows software disks and found that on of the disks (I think the one with the drivers) also had a hardware diagnostics test, which I ran. Everything turned out to be fine including the mouse pad. During that test the mouse pad worked fine. After removing that disk and running on the installed Windows, the mouse no longer worked.
That indicates that the mouse pad works fine but that the drivers are missing or corrupted.
I looked, but could not find a way to upload the drivers from the installation disk, without reinstalling all software (and wiping the disk clean after reformatting it).
I am not sure what you refer to with File restore CD, but I know of two options:
A: Use the provided "Windows CD" set.  I used that set before to reinstall the software and was not aware of any choice given to not reformat the HD, although I have seen an options in previous version to do a "repair". Have to look for that.
B: Use the "Dell PC Restore" capability where a disk image of the HD as installed by Dell prior to shipping is used to restore the original factory software. According to the documentation all programs and data are permanently deleted.

Before I attempt the "repair option" (If I can find it) I want to do that on a new HD, which I ordered and will be here Tuesday/Wednesday.

Thanks for your continuous help,

Regards,

Hans

In the meantime

[Hans Brinker]

Steve,

Strange problem with "My Documents":
With the HD in the CMS unit hooked up via USB to another PC, I looked for the regular data files and folders orginally in MY Documents.
To make sure that I could see all files and folders, I changed selection for all files and folder from "hidden" to "make visual". Two strange things:
- With 41 out of 118 GB of data on the drive, the total of all folders and files I can find back on the drive is about 8 GB. Where is the rest? Still in "hidden" folders?
- When I select the folder "Owner", the following error message appears: "F:\Documents and Settings\Owner is not accessible. Access Denied!" Why does that happen?

Does the setting change to make the "hidden" folders "visible" only apply to those on the C: Drive? If so, how does one make the F: Drive folders visible so that I can copy them to a safe location?
And why does this "Access Denied" error come up? Is the original Windows password protecting this?
I have never seen that before in earlier Windows XP versions. When and "old" HD was mounted as a slave drive, all folders could be freely accessed.

Regards,

Hans

[SteveW]

- When I select the folder "Owner", the following error message appears: "F:\Documents and Settings\Owner is not accessible. Access Denied!" Why does that happen?

When you create Users (like Owner) in start > Control Panel > User Accounts, there is some point where you have the option to "Make this account private", or something like that. I think it's the same screen where you specify the type of account (Administrator or Limited).

If you make accounts Private, it prevents users from viewing files and folders in other users' accounts.

If you're logged in as one user and try to click on the Documents and Settings account of any other user whose account is private, you get the exact message you posted above, so that probably has something to do with why this is happening.

It might also explain why it doesn't show the true disk usage, because it probably won't show the totals for any files or folders where it's not also showing the details.

[Hans Brinker]

Steve,

Thanks, that makes sense.
Is there any way to "crack" that?
I know there are various programs available to crack passwords, would any of those help me here to break into my own computer HD?

I reinstalled the HD in the PC and tried your suggestion of pushing the Tab key twice. It did not put the pointer in the log-in box. It is on the exact same spot it has been for about a week.

The cursor is and has always been blinking in the Windows log-in box but since the pointer is outside of it, the box is not selected.

Regards,

Hans

[SteveW]

Hans,

If the cursor is blinking in the box, you should be able to type your password there. If you can't, I think it implies that it's not just the mouse that's frozen, but the keyboard, too. That would also explain the tab and arrow keys not doing anything.

My definitive answer about the password programs is "I don't know," but I tend to doubt they would help. The main reason is that if they're programs, it seems like you'd have to be already logged in on one account in order to install and run them on another.

In case it's the whole keyboard assembly that's disabled, you might try connecting an external keyboard, if that's possible. Maybe it would use a different set of drivers than the ones that aren't working.

You said that you can bring up the alternate boot options (the screen that gives you the Safe Mode option), so that means your keyboard is working ok up to the point that Windows is fully loaded, so that does make it sound like a driver problem or a malfunctioning start-up program.

I'll see if any of the other alternate boot options look like they might be useful...

[SteveW]

During a short window while Windows is loading, you can press F8 to bring up the Windows Advanced Options screen. A couple of the options might be worth trying:

--Last Known Good
Sounds useful, but I didn't test it.

--Safe Mode With Command Prompt
I was hoping this would bring up a plain Command Prompt. Unfortunately, you do have to go through a graphics screen first, but since this is a different mode from normal, there's a chance it could work.

Once you get past the graphical login, you're in Safe Mode but with a Command Prompt box. IF you can get to this point, you can run: msconfig and other Windows setup and diagnostic programs. It will take some web research to find out what programs might be able to do useful things here.

To get out of the command prompt, type: exit
You'll be at a blank Safe Mode screen with no options shown.
I got out with: CTRL+ALT+DEL. This brings up Task Manager.  In it is a menu option that I think was Shutdown > Logoff (or Restart).

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Previously, I suggested

Since you're at least getting to the Windows Logon screen, I wonder if you could log in to your laptop by connecting a 2nd computer to it through one of the ports. That might be a way to get a C:> prompt (on the 2nd computer)

At the Logon screen, I believe Windows is fully loaded, so that an external networked computer might be able to log into it.

If your 2nd computer has a network port that is compatible with the broken one, you might try connecting them and seeing if you can somehow log in from the second computer.

If the two network adapters are not compatible, you might try connecting them by serial or parallel(?) or USB or whatever types of connections can legitimately connect two computers. I know you can do it with serial port cables. I've done that many times (but only to transfer data, not to login as a user).  I don't know about other connection methods. 

What I was hoping to achieve with this was obtain a text-based login method. I think the program you might use for this (running on the 2nd, external computer) is called telnet. Some web research will reveal whether I'm on the right track with that. If it's not telnet, it seems like there should be some Windows program that accomplishes what I'm talkiing about.

Something that I would worry about before trying this is the possibility that some sort of malware is the source of the problem.  If so, this could give it the opportunity to migrate to the second computer. 

So these are just brainstorming ideas to consider. They're not things I'm confident about.

Based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telnet, I think telnet was indeed what I had in mind. How to use it and whether it would work are different matters.

[Hans Brinker]

Steve,

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You don't seem to give up lightly; shows character!

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I tried external mouse and keyboard in combination with two sets of USB ports. No difference!

One thing I did notice is that the Numlock light is on continuously and does not respond to the numlock key beying pushed.  I found BIOS choices selecting or deselecting the Numlock key for disabling the embedded key pad in the keyboard. But, it nowhere states that it involved the mouse pad.
But according to the default BIOS settings the Numlock light is on during system boots, so at the stage of Windows login screen, the Numlock light being on may be normal.

I went through almost all "Windows Advanced Options Menu" choices and yes, I can go to the command prompt, but then what?

"Last Known Good": One of the first ones I tried; led me straight back to the Windows login screen with the frozen mouse!

Safe Mode with Networking might indeed be a good option if I can network myself into it?
Have you or anyone else in this community ever done that?
If so, enlighten me!

Thanks and Regards,

Hans

[SteveW]

the Numlock light being on may be normal

Yes, it is. I have Numlock set to off by default, but it is on during boot, and doesn't turn off until it's read my preferences.

Safe Mode with Networking might indeed be a good option if I can network myself into it?

I suspect that's the one you should use if you try a telnet experiment. Although, on second thought, if telnet works, it should work with the normal startup, nothing special. You'd boot until you get to the frozen mouse logon screen, then start trying to log in from the second computer.

yes, I can go to the command prompt, but then what?

That's the best news so far. If you get to the command prompt, it means you are logged on, and the command prompt allows you to run programs.  Probably any program on the computer as long as you know its name. For example, Notepad.exe would, I believe, launch Notepad.

There are many Windows system utility programs for diagnostics and configuration. msconfig.exe is one of them. It has screens where you can set Windows startup options. On one of them is a list of the programs that auto-load during Windows boot. If BestCrypt is in the list of startup programs, I'd disable it.

You'd launch msconfig by typing at the C:> prompt: msconfig<ENTER>

You can safely browse the screens in msconfig, and you can safely exit with Cancel, but before you make any changes, read about msconfig at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Msconfig. Try following useful-looking links on that page and read those, too. Do a web search. Microsoft.com and its related sites (like MSDN) probably has articles about it. Be careful. It's probably going to take some judgment about what to do; that's the reason for all the web research and reading. Changing the wrong settings could create a worse problem than you already have.

If BestCrypt is in the list of startups, I'd disable it, exit msconfig, and try to reboot. If you can get logged in, I'd uninstall BestCrypt, first thing.

[Hans Brinker]

The main goal at this moment is to get the data files (= non system files) from the HD.

There are two ways to approach this:
1. Log-into (corrupted) Windows laptop and copy all data files to a 2nd drive.
2. Move the drive with corrupted Windows and data files to a USB HD reader, access the USB drive from a 2nd PC and copy the data files that way.

The problem under 1 is that the mouse is frozen and that more may be corrupt preventing Windows to start-up and / or otherwise work properly. Solutions have been discussed in earlier posts.

The problem under 2 is that all files of real interest are not accessible due to the fact that they are (as it look like) declared "private" and only accessible by the "owner" after using his password. However, hooked up via USB and a flat disk, there is no option to use a password to access this "Owners" section.

Not giving up on option 1, option 2 may still be the easier way in.
Looking at the BIOS, there is a section for "Security", where one can can do all kinds of things with passwords.
Although I don't quite recall defining it as such, there are login options for Administrator and Owner in Safe mode.
So there must be an Administrator password in addition to the Owner password.
Looking at the Security options in BIOS one can apparently set, change or delete Administrator, System, Internal HDD passwords.
Interestingly, the "present setting" for all these passwords is "not-set".

• Are we talking about the same Windows log-in passwords here? It does not list the Owner password, but that can always be replaced by the Administrator password (as far as I know).

• If I would delete all passwords here, would that give access to the "private" Owner data files currently not accessible?

• I would assume that I would need the Administrator password to allow me to delete the Administrator password, otherwise the currently built in security would be useless.

If the above three can all be answered with "Yes", I would be able to access the "private" Owner's section of the HD and copy the data, assuming that I know my Administrator password. This all looks to be too good to be true and therefore primes mew to think it is NOT true.

Did anyone try this before?
I clearly states everywhere that "Successfull changes of the password take effect immediately", and I am not sure that everything is easily reversible (that besides the usual risks of not properly typing is or recording what the new passwords were).

Looking forward to anyone's thoughts and experiences.

Regards,

Hans




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[Hans Brinker]

Steve,

Good to know that my memory did not fail me that badly (yet!). I am now in the Command Prompt window, but I am not 100% sure that this version of it does all I may need it to do (although it stated "Set-up is starting Windows"). This is the one I recall seeing last week, but I did not quite recall how I got there until now.

The one I am in I can only access by inserting the Windows Application software disks and select (via F12) followed by the selection to start from to CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD following by selection of Repair Mode.
To enter into the repair, one need to input the Administrator password. After three false tries it falls back into the default mode and starts up Windows (with al the problems we know of). Usng the correct password we end up with the command prompt C:\WINDOWS>. I am not sure where this is run from; only from the files loaded into memory from the Windows Installation disk or from the HD. Based on the one or two minutes it took to extract files, I don't think it copied all files from the CD. I haven't use command prompt commands for a long time.
I tried CD C:\ <enter> but that is not recognized. That gave me C:\
But C:\>MSConfig or C:\>MSConfig.exe or C:\WINDOWS>MSConfig or C:\WINDOWS>MSConfig.exe was not recognized.
Using C:\WINDOWS>DIR, I found BCUnInstall.exe, but it did not recognize C:\WINDOWS>BCUnInstall.exe .
C:\Help <enter> gives a list of ~ 30 commands it does recognize (all the basic ones I recall from ancient times).

Hans

[Hans Brinker]

I also see that via the Windows Re-installation disks, I have an option to boot using an onboard NIC device.
When selected, it appears to look for a connection, but cannot find anything and defaults to starting up Windows again the old way..
I probably need to configure one of the other PC's on the network to make this to work.

Has anyone done this before?

Hans

[Hans Brinker]

I think I solved it!!!

I mean not the "frozen mouse" pointer, but the file recovery.
The CMS Data Transfer Kit support person had dealt with this before and gave me the following links concerning how to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP.

Vista:

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/31ad4562-aee7-4fed-8316-89114dc973031033.mspx#EI

XP:

http://brajeshwar.com/2005/file-access-denied-on-windows-xp-and-how-to-take-ownership/

I followed the procedure for one of the most important subfolders and copied it to a flash drive. The files appear just fine. I will have to do this for the whole HD and copy all desired folders over after I re-install all application software, but so far, it looks like that will work.

Thanks Steve for hanging in with me.

I hope that other will find this as an additional location on the web to find a solution to recover data files from a corrupted hard disk.

Hans

[SteveW]

Hans,

Glad to hear it's going well. Sounds like you're getting the situation under control. I'll reply to some of your earlier comments, aware that some of the answers may be no longer needed. 

Looking at the BIOS, there is a section for "Security", where one can can do all kinds of things with passwords.

I haven't looked at BIOS in a while, but since you can get to the BIOS settings without a password, I'd expect (or hope) that you can't do anything useful there; otherwise, using passwords at all would be sort of pointless. 

So there must be an Administrator password in addition to the Owner password.

There is a "hidden Administrator" account that has very high system privileges and is only visible during Safe Mode login.

Some reading a few months ago led me to believe that when an account password isn't set, you can login without using a password (obviously), but it also imposes the restriction that you can only log in for that account from the system console (keyboard, monitor), not from externally, so I guess in order to attempt an external login, such as with telnet from a 2nd computer, you'd have to give the account a password. 

Are we talking about the same Windows log-in passwords here? It does not list the Owner password, but that can always be replaced by the Administrator password (as far as I know).

I don't know, but for the reason given above, I can't think why it would allow you to change any user's password in BIOS. 

If I would delete all passwords here, would that give access to the "private" Owner data files currently not accessible?

I doubt it, but I'd hesitate to tinker with passwords at this location. 

I would assume that I would need the Administrator password to allow me to delete the Administrator password, otherwise the currently built in security would be useless.

Right, that's what I was thinking. 

If the above three can all be answered with "Yes", I would be able to access the "private" Owner's section of the HD and copy the data, assuming that I know my Administrator password. This all looks to be too good to be true and therefore primes mew to think it is NOT true.

The Hidden Administrator account is so powerful that even in WinXP Home it can access the profiles of all users, and change ownership, and perform other actions that even other Administrator accounts cannot do.