BIG! Driver Problem!

To all,

I have a rather large driver problem that I need lots of help in fixing!

I was using my computer quite happily until all of a sudden it froze after an install which installed drivers. After Ctrl-Alt-Del and everything else I could think of failed, I switched it off using the power button. It shut down well and I restarted it. I had to use the keyboard before Windows started (keyboard running on the BIOS) and this worked fine. As there is only 1 account I logged in fine (no password) and saw my desktop. Perfect!

I then realised the mouse did not work. Neither did the keyboard. My optical mouse had no red light on the bottom and my bluetooth keyboard (USB dongle) also did not work. My speaker symbol in bottom right showed red circle with white X (suggesting no driver). My wireless network (automatically connecting) did not connect. None of my USB devices worked.

So no driver for: my mouse, my keyboard, any USB device, my speakers, or my network.

As a test I put in Zoo Tycoon 2 and the splash screen appeared! So I made a CD with devcon.exe and an autorun.inf to run devcon.exe in rescan mode. This for some strange reason did not start up at all (worked on other PCs in my house). Will try again later.

I don't really know what to do. I don't want to have to do a clean restore as only did one 2 months ago! Fortunately, I can back up my files from BartPE. Before windows starts, after BIOS loads, my mouse has red optical light on so hardware not at fault, well very unlikely at least.

Is there any way I can restore my drivers? Is there any way to do a repair of vista with no data loss (I know about in-place upgrade but needs desktop to work! From BartPE, I was unable to start device manager, from System32; it said "Not a valid Win32 application". It said this for all .exe files. Is there any way of fixing this because if I can get into device manager I can probably update the drivers and fix my problem?

Imagine looking at device manager now! Lots of colour probably, (red and yellow not green (if device manager had green!!)) :D

Can I install drivers manually from BartPE or side by side operating system (not ideal) or linux (sorry, only have Backtrack to hand!)

The repair options on my windows vista disk, Dell OEM upgrade (but with repair options), unfortunately did not work, not surprising really.
Also, don't know anything about this, but could a network boot help me?

Thanks for reading and thanks in advance!

Richard!

Doesn't sound like a driver problem.. Sounds like your motherboard took a hearty crap and spit out the bones.. I'd recommend maybe trying to reinstall Windows, as mouse/keyboard use generic drivers, as well do speakers.. You may also have a virus.. At this time, I CAN recommend going to Safe Mode and trying to do a System Restore.. But the chances are very slim.. :/

I wish you the best..

Sorry, forgot to add, already been into safe mode, still nothing worked. Did system restore already, said successful but did not help. Really hope motherboard is not dead as computer is only just over a year old. However mouse etc. did work in BartPE, so motherboard not totally nailed (I think!) USB ports worked fine then. Will have to do clean install soon. Thanks for reading my long post. Sorry for missing out the system restore part. Thanks again for all your help.

Richard

Ok. Give us an update of the results on that when you do it. Let's hope for the best.

Thanks very much Timmah for all your help! I did a clean install and everything is fixed!:D Just reinstalling everything but all my files were backed up so no big problems. Thanks again,

Richard

P.S. I will give you some + rep!