Good god, I thought there was information about everything on the internet.

Platform: Windows 98 SE

Problem: Computer with no PS/2 or serial ports (Abit AT7 motherboard) is having another computer's hard drive boot onto it, and learn its hardware (something only Win9x seems to be capable of, easily). But the input devices (KB/mouse) are USB. When USB is only half installed, the mouse/keyboard are removed from BIOS control, but Windows hasn't yet installed the drivers. No control over the computer at all.
Solution: Install LAN driver in safe mode (at least that device was half-detected), install VNC, and VNC the computer to finish installation of USB components.

Problem with that: The "Windows did not detect a mouse" dialog box prevents the VNC server service from starting, and... still, no control over the computer.
Solution to THAT problem: apply a registry tweak in Safe Mode that equates to the "do not show this dialog box again" checkbox, since safe mode doesn't try initializing the USB controller, and doesn't remove keyboard control from the BIOS.

Problem with THAT: WHAT IS THE REGISTRY KEY FOR THAT?!

I put the hard drive in yet ANOTHER computer, left the mouse unplugged, exported the current registry in Safe Mode, booted into normal mode, checking the "do not show" checkbox, crashed it back into safe mode again (had to kill the power since Windows wouldn't shut down without installing a bunch of additional drivers for THAT board), exported the registry to a second file, then do a text compare against the two files.

Funny. There was nothing in the registry about the mouse.

I forgot! This is Windows 98! It was hidden in win.ini!

Add this to the [windows] section:
SkipMouseRedetect=0

I don't understand why it's "=0", but win.ini was modified at the right time, and that's worded properly... strange.

So now, anyone that has the same problem as I do, can finally have this irritating catch-22 solved. Let's see if I can get VNC started now...

Does skipping mouse redetect (since it's called like that) make windows booting faster?

From what I figure, if Windows doesn't detect that mouse, it presents that dialog as a way to "redetect" a serial mouse if you plug one in. So it'll only do this redetect if it didn't detect a mouse. Meaning, if there is a mouse, it won't make anything faster... but if you're looking for XP-like functionality (where it just Doesn't Give A Crap™), that line sure won't hurt

edit: As far as that computer went, the line got around the dialog box, but the endless boxing match with the USB controller has left me completely frustrated and out of ideas. VNC won't start the server. VNC is in the tasks list, but it isn't acting as a server for some reason (can't connect, but can ping the computer...). If I let it boot to the desktop (which it finally does!), the keyboard stops responding as if something else killed the bios USB keyboard hook. Since it's not Windows 2K-based, I can't kill Explorer and use Task Manager either. It's like an unsolvable catch-22.

And I absolutely loathe Windows 98. At least ME has native USB support! Why do people direct all the hate at WinME?!!

98SE supports usb, usb support has been around since 95c, 98se should detect the usb controllers

USB support has been there since Win95 B. But it wasn't installed along with everything else. In Win98, though, I think it was.

I think what he meant is that the device drivers are installed by default.

It _is_ supported, and it has (basic) drivers.

Problem is, unlike most drivers, the USB controller drivers always pop up that god forsaken "found new hardware" wizard that you have to push enter, enter, enter, enter, to get past. Even after finally getting the USB controllers to successfully install, the USB Human Interface Devices have those goddamn wizard popups too. I hate Windows 98. I managed to get the USB controller to install by hitting "enter" in advance of the dialog being completed, so that when the driver initializes and kills the keyboard, it'd've already had "enter" pressed and would continue. That part worked. But then that other wizard came up and I **** near nuked the computer.

Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate Windows 98. I was only trying this out of curiosity as to what was on that drive... now I'm not even curious anymore. I'm just going to erase it and put XP on it like all computers should have... *shakes fist*

An interesting point of view. Because I hate USB keyboards and mices. They are much less reliable when something is going wrong with the computer or system. A computer without a separate port for a keyboard or/and mouse is something I would not buy, for sure.

I think, in your case the simplest solution would be to disable the USB controller driver used by the Windows 98 and to use just the BIOS legacy USB keyboard and mouse support.

Tried it. It actually works, until the desktop loads, at which point for no reason whatsoever, the computer says "oh, forget you, I don't need a keyboard". I don't understand why Windows decides to do something with the keyboard/mouse when Explorer loads, but somehow it does, and it really irritates the crap outta me. The computer doesn't jam, as everything continues to load, but it sure seems like it, since my only way out is, as usual, the power switch.

As for this particular board, it's Abit's attempt at a "legacy free" system. It wouldn't even need the SuperIO chip at all (which handles floppy, PS/2, serial, IR, and parallel), if they would have also left out the floppy connector. Woulda been just like an Xbox!

edit: Forgot to mention - the added space on the back panel is now used for SIX USB ports (4x USB 1.1, 2x USB 2.0, since USB 2.0 was new at the time and 1.1 was built into the southbridge, 2.0 uses a dedicated 4-port controller chip), 2 1394 ports, 5 audio I/O jacks, optical audio output, and a LAN jack. It's cool, the things you can do when you take out those old parallel, serial, and game ports... later versions added back the PS/2 ports though. It also has no fewer than 4 DDR memory slots, an AGP 8x slot, 3 PCI, and a 4-port (8-drive) ATA-133 RAID controller onboard. It's a decent system

I seem to recall that Win98 (any flavor) didn't support USB mouse in Safe Mode, but WinME did. [Edit: I think it depended on type of USB controller.] True/untrue?

Not true. I have a USB mouse, and it works fine in Safe Mode. Works fine all around.
My main problem with it is that Windows thinks the legacy driver is a second mouse, so I had to manually disable the PS/2 driver. To me, this indicates Windows uses BIOS calls for the PS/2 driver rather than actually implementing a PS/2 driver.
Anyway, I think I've since disabled the legacy mode, since I hardly ever use my mouse in DOS.

It is true that USB HIDs are problematic, though. On occasion, certain USB HIDs, or even USB controllers, freeze up on any flavor of Windows (98, XP, etc), forcing either a re-plug of the device, a restart of the driver, or a restart of the whole computer. It's probably some sort of heat or power consumption issue, but it's still annoying when it happens.