Virus disabled my keyboard at boot

[Dr Girlfriend]

Was at my cumputer a few minutes ago, opened a file, and windows defender went nuts with warning pop ups, a few min later the computer force restarted and gave me a fake log in screen.

I shut the system down and popped in a windows recovery disk, but the virus disabled my keyboard during the boot process so I can't get into safe mode, or even reinstall windows.

Is there anything I can do?

 

[knight_of_baawa]

Yes: a virus CANNOT disable your keyboard during boot. It's just not possible. Period. Reseat your keyboard connection.

 

[Dr Girlfriend]

Well, it did. I reseated connections multiple times, used different ports, and a different keyboard. Normally the keyboard lights up right when I hit the power button, now it doesn't light up until the fake login screen comes up.

 

[Supermuncher85]

You set the boot order to boot from the CD and not the HDD?

 

[Dr Girlfriend]

My default boot priority is CD > HDD. That doesn't help though because I can't use my keyboard to press a key to get into the install/repair menu from the windvd.

 

[AlexHTech]

Plug in two keyboards LOL Jk
You should try booting to a windows recovery disk

 

[knight_of_baawa]

I'm sorry, but it's really utterly completely impossible for your keyboard to not light up until you get to the "fake login screen". Get to the BIOS and ensure, as Supermuncher said, that your boot order is set to optical first.

 

[why_wolf]

unplug hard drives, turn on computer, enter bios, check boot order and confirm it is CD first. Then nuke the hard drives and reinstall windows.

 

[Dr Girlfriend]

For whatever reason all (4) of the front USB ports on the computer weren't allowing the keyboard to be active during boot, despite the system recognizing the keyboard. All the ports DO work, so why that happened in conjunction with the virus take over (despite being impossible apparently) is beyond me.

I swapped to the rear ports on a whim and the keyboard started working during boot again, did a system restore from a system image and I'm good to go. Now the front ports work exactly like they did before, and the keyboard is usable during boot from them again.