brian1975 :
My solution was simply to reset the UEFI setting. I have no clue to why this worked. The mouse and keyboard worked fine in the UEFI, but after the windows 7 install had loaded some files they both turned off. At first I tried all the USB-ports (Both front and back) with the same result, a dead mouse and keyboard. So I tried to reset the UEFI to default and now I could install windows.
Somewhat related I guess. Will look into UEFI. Was also thinking of trying a bluetooth keyboard and mouse next time i go to the computer shop, although i noticed in my device manager that this was not working (I never use it). My problem:
I installed w7 on a macair so that I can do both, as I need Windows for work and use mac for video editing. Everything worked like a charm for about half a year until, BAM, while working in W my keyboard and trackpad stopped working. I thought a restart might help so did that, but when entering the bootcamp screen my keyboard still did not work. So I was forced to wait until the timeout finished and it started automatically in mac. There my keyboard and trackpad worked fine. While there I spent a few hours reading up on the issue and it seems that there is some issue with the machine's USB 3.0. Usually I have everything set to "notify me of upgrades and wait for my decision". Perhaps something automatically updated the USB 3 driver, but some forums (with this precise mac/W problem) were discussing that the solution was to uninstall some Extreme USB 3 hub etc. Another forum suggested using an external keyboard to get into Windows to solve the problem. Because I thought this might happen again, I went out of my way to buy a portable, rollup keyboard. This worked and I was able to use the cursor key at bootcamp startup (bootcamp installs on the mac OS and through this can install W7 after a partition of the disk, startup in Windows is direct and not virtual within a running Mac OS, which is also possible) to startup in Windows. Now I'm in W with this extremely difficult-to-use keyboard, but at least I'm in, and from memory of reading the forums I thought I'd try the uninstall USB 3 Extreme (the name looked like Extreme but not exactly - can't remember now). I was rather hesitant, worried that I'd lose my two USB, so I created a system restore point. Even so, I was still worried, because without functional USB slots, how the heck was I supposed to get back into W?
And that is precisely where I am now. A beautiful machine with no arms and legs for Windows. The external mouse and keyboard (other keyboards were tried) worked up to a certain point when booting from an install disk (I put an external CD rom with the original Windows7 install disk into one USB and external keyboard into the other USB), whereby I am staring at the language option window and where I can press Install. After pressing Install, according to suggestions on the web, I would press Repair and then choose the restore point to just before, albeit insufficient trepidation, I uninstalled the USBs. So close yet so far. Tried putting in other keyboards, external mouse, obviously had to keep the CD rom in there so couldn't remove that from one of the two USBs. Not sure why I still saw that screen because, if the USBs stopped working at that point, would not the connection to the external CD rom be severed and the screen disappear? Should I try an external USB hub so that I can put more devices into the left USB slot where the CD rom seemed to still function?
When logged into mac I have read-only access to possibly all my files on the Windows partition. Would rather not reinstall W because of this minor issue. If I can just get to the restore point I'll be back in Windows with the crappy keyboard, and then can at least continue with my experimentations. Strange but thankfully the power button still works on the machine's keyboard, otherwise i would have to dismantle it and rip out the battery, as it is not accessible on this machine.
And if you are curious, yes, I find myself in these quite absurd situations on a fairly regular basis, and it does not necessarily have to concern the computer. Looking forward to some suggestions.