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I am physically locked out of my windows.

Can someone lend me a brick?

I’m a windows 8.1 user.

- 8GB Corsair ram
- Samsung 840 Evo 250GB SSD

- Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 motherboard
- Seasonic X-series PSU.

Backstory: last night I was gaming over my living room TV. I played through a USB 2.0 Hub connect to a usb extension lead to extend the reach of my peripherals (I game this way most the time). I was using a G600 Logitech gaming mouse & Razer Tartarus keypad when I noticed my main keyboard (wireless Logitech K270) had stopped working. Since I couldn’t escape out of the game, I opted to rest the computer.

The Problem: On reboot, I found that only my G600 gaming mouse & Razer keypad worked. Absolutely none of my other peripherals work at all except to access the Bios. Fortunately my G600 mouse still worked in Windows, but I had to log in using the “on screen keyboard” to punch in my password.
In Windows I checked my Device Manager to find that all peripherals were recognized but unidentified, all except the G600 mouse & Razer keypad. All other peripherals were recognized as inputs by my computer, but unidentified within Windows 8. I have tried to access the peripherals properties to update & establish the drivers on each of the unidentified peripherals but Windows still won’t identify & establish their functions. Numerous resets & shutdowns have been made. Numerous shifting of dongles around USBs (both 2.0 & 3.0) have been made.

For the record I have already tried:
- Restarting the computer & switching power on and off, as well as unplugging the power supply.
- Checking numerous peripherals on separate computers (Mouse and Keyboard Peripherals are all Working perfectly fine on two other computers).
-Using both wireless and wired peripherals of different brands. However I have not yet tried PS/2 Plug as I don’t have that kind of keyboard & mouse. - Moving dongles around USB ports to test both USB 2.0 & 3.0.
- Accessing Bios (Asus Sabretooth 2.0) to ensure all USBs are enabled. (Clearly the USBs a reading the keyboards as I can hit F2 to access Bios. I have also used F5 in Bios to ‘optimize defaults on reboot’) – still Didn’t work.
- Entering Windows to re-establish hardware.
I've tried entering safe mode, but between windows 8.1, the SSD & the UEFI bios - I couldn't be more up the creek regarding that course of action.
- Finally; Installing Teamviewer for assistance from a friend - a qualified IT guy.

Bad to worse: Despite his experience, my friend was as perplexed as I was. He recommended I take out the SSD and access my information on a different computer. I'm not experienced enough to do this, so I finally decided on the ultimatum - I would backup my HDD and reinstall Windows 8 (Damn you, Microsoft). However, windows then denied my G600 mouse too! As well my Tartarus. So no peripherals work now. I am physically locked out of Windows (admittedly, it could be that with all the tooling around we did, we forgot to re-enable the G600 mouse in the device manager before rebooting). Be as it may - I'm locked out.


…So, what now? Also, Am I able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free, or can I exchange it for a Windows 7?Anything but Windows 8.


Some further Observations:
Clearly the issue lies not with the hardware, but with the Microsoft Windows software. Interestingly, while the keyboards don’t work – the ‘sleep’ key on my Dell keyboard does work; causing the computer to enter sleep mode in Windows when pressed. So again, the hardware must at least be recognized by the USB.

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