I bought a used copy of the game Red Faction and installed it under Windows 98SE. The game starts fine, however within a minute or so of getting to the main menu, the game stops responding to the mouse buttons and the keyboard. It doesn't crash, it just stops responding, but only to the buttons/keys.

For example, if I start a game, it will behave normally for a minute or so, then all of a sudden, it's like the keyboard goes completely dead and the mouse buttons stop working. I can still pan the view with the mouse, but nothing else. I can't move, can't shoot, can't exit the game, nothing.

When this happens, not even the Caps Lock LED on my keyboard will come on. I've also noticed that if I was moving when this happens (meaning I was pressing one of the keys), I continue to move in the same direction. It's like the game decides to ignore the keyboard and just keeping doing whatever it was last doing. My keyboard has no special features at all, it's just a cheap PS/2 one.

I've tried it with and without the 1.20 patch. I've also installed it on a friend's system (XP) where it worked fine (with or without the patch). However at one point I found a user in a forum who was having the same problem and they were using XP, so it doesn't seem like the OS is to blame. Besides, it's supposed to be compatible with 98.

I've tried replacing my mouse driver with a standard MS one, but that didn't help either.

I've even tried it with difference versions of the NVidia drivers.

I've written to the company, but they only gave me the standard advice like "update your drivers", etc. The developers themselves also had no idea why this happens.

Any ideas?