Intermittent Load Failure for Alternating Devices

In case that title is not clear, some of my devices are failing, some of the time. There are no errors popping up and in some cases it shows to be installed and working, like the keyboard - it is in device manager as detected and the NumLock light is on, even though I can't type anything. Failing devices: PS/2 keyboard, USB wired optical mouse with and without PS/2 adaptor, multiple USB ports.

I have been out of town for a while, so my computer has been off for a couple of months until last week. I had been having problems with all 8 of my USB's since SP2 (I'm on SP3 now), but I discovered the other day when I booted up that all but 2 USB's were now working, though the eject icon was not showing up for my device*. I had a problem yesterday with loose RAM and when I fixed that and booted back up, I had no mouse. Plugged it into USB (took off adaptor) and it worked. The next restart, I had no mouse or keyboard. The reboot after that, I had mouse, keyboard, but only 1-2 functioning USB ports (including the one mouse was in).

Another thing I have noticed is that some things are not always showing up in my taskbar. At the moment, I have only my anti-virus (always there, no problems) and my sound card control panel. Yesterday, at varying times, the SC was not there, but the "eject this device" green arrow icon was there, even though nothing was plugged in - *then later when something was plugged in it was gone. Another time, I had the SC, the eject icon and an icon for my network connection - not the double-monitor one that indicates connected to the internet, but the one that looks like a tv over a pipe. These changes seem to correlate with the device failures. As in, when a new failure occurs, a new icon appears or disappears.

Since the USB problem has been occurring for so long, I don't think it is related to the RAM, but since the mouse and keyboard issue is new, it would seem that part might be. Then again maybe just coincidence? I don't know.

I just remembered one other thing. Before I left, a few weeks after I updated from 2K to XP I started having a problem where I had to leave the Windows cd in the drive in order for the PC to boot properly because...HAL? (going by memory) was failing to load correctly? The solutions I found at the time failed to fix the issue and since I was leaving, I just went with the easy fix of leaving the cd in. Got so used to it, I didn't think about that when these things started happening. Don't know if that is related, but thought I'd better mention it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

Thanks, Pete.

I actually did a clean install, but I attempted dual boot and I think that's where I got into trouble.

Once I remembered the HAL error, I figured it all had to be part of that, but didn't know how to fix it.

I guess I will try a fresh install.

Thanks for your help - I will let you know if it works.