I'm an extreme noob so please bear with me on my obvious ignorance.

I bought a 4 axis cnc foam cutting machine 2 weeks ago. The seller successfully installed a licensed copy of Mach3 on to my laptop.
I used to be able to manually controll the x1, x2, y1, y2 axis's with the w,a,d,x keys and the up. down, left, & right keys on my laptop. Now they no longer work.

What went wrong?

Also, I started cutting a block of foam with my laptop controlling the hot wire cutter and Mack3 software. I had forgot to plug in the power supply to the laptop, so after a half hour the laptop quit and I had to reboot it with the power now plugged in. My problem is the hotwire is still inside the block (turned off). How do I restart the hotwire to continue to cut the 23 shapes I had loaded into Mack3's to originally start it?

Cant help you with starting the hotwire but for your jogging problem make sure the Jog Control button is active( green  showing round it)
 
Hood

Just thinking maybe the Hotwire start is linked up like a spindle, try typing M3 in the MDI line and hitting the enter key.
Hood

Cant help you with starting the hotwire but for your jogging problem make sure the Jog Control button is active( green showing round it)
 
Hood

Jogging prob?

I can jog OK. It's just my laptop keyboard axis controls are gone

so how do you jog? I thought you said the arrow keys dont work any more?
Hood

I figured out the problem. You're right Hood, I couldn't jog because I didn't activate the jog button!!!

I didn't realize that you couldn't be on the toolpath screen if you wanted key control.

Two things you could do, the easiest would be to just press the Tab key so that the you open the Jog control flyout and you could then use the mouse to jog. But the one I would do is open the screen in screen4 (you will find in Mach3 folder or download from the downloads page) Then go to the Toolpath screen, click on the button symbol at the side bar and then click on the screen to add the button. Once the button is on the screen double click on it and choose the OEM option and type in 103. You can then add text to the button if you wish. Once you have that you can save the screen and when you open Mach next time you will be able to Jog from the Toolpath screen. BTW you dont have to have this button visible, you could place it anywhere on the screen, even so that its "offscreen" when viewed in Mach.

Hood