boot failure

[Rigit]

I'm working on a computer for a friend. The hard drive failed so I installed another and installed windows XP pro. Everything was fine until this morning. It rebooted over night and failed to start again giving me the error message. "Security Accounts Manager initialization failed because of the following error: A device attached to the system is not functioning." I found a microsoft document that says that the sam file is corrupt or missing. It says to replace or restore the file from backup. I tried to restore using a copy from another computer but it failed. To make matters worse the machine has stopped responding to usb keyboard and mouse. I can do nothing until I can get the usb issue fixed. I don't care about reformatting since it's a fresh install anyway. Any ideas? Just getting the keyboard working would be a major help. I've tried 2 different ones.

AMD Sempron 64 320+
Foxconn KT8M890M2MA-KRS2H Mother board
2GB ddr2 SDRAM

 

[trents]

I would try resetting the cmos with the jumper by the battery. Make sure the power is turned off at the PSU first and don't power up again until replacing the jumper to default pin position.

That looks like some pretty old hardware. Anything could go wrong: motherboard, PSU.

I would also run Memtest86+ for several cycles to check ram. If you've never used it, download and extract the ISO file, unpack and burn it to disc with ISO burning software which you can get free. It is self-booting.

 

[trents]

If the above recommendations don't help, start removing unnecessary devices from the system such as add on cards, floppy, CD Drive, etc. Try taking all but one memory stick out and move it to every slot, then try the same with the other memory sticks.

 

[CgS Drone]

Are you able to enter cmos using the USB keyboard? if so then I would say the drivers for the USB got blown away some how. If you can get into cmos using the keyboard try disabling the USB Legacy device in cmos, save and reboot and see if the keyboard and mouse work.