Dell forum: Old Dell Doesn't Recognize Keyboard

with that Live CD it recognises the keyboard?

That's strange because the BIOS would still carry out its POST, even with the Linux Live CD in the drive waiting to be booted off.

I had a Dell in 2002 running XP, but I had, (and still have), a Belkin wireless keyboard running off a PS/2 connection, so my own impression was that Dell didn't mind what keyboard was connected.

I'm no tech so I will have to leave this for others, but I do think it is unusual for the system to boot initially, pass POST, then into a Live CD all successfully, but then fail on a reboot. What happens on a shutdown then a start up?

Mark

Yeah, Mark that's pretty much it. Boots and runs fine on the Live CD, but let me be clear, after I install it to the hard drive and re-boot it doesn't recognize the keyboard. The CD is set for automatic boot and I think Puppy takes care of all the dirty little details of recognizing and configuring attached hardware. But I've got the Grub bootloader installed to the Master Boot Record which means before the OS boots, it goes to a screen of boot choices (in case I have two or more OS's installed on separate partitions). There, I need to arrow up or down and hit "Enter" to continue the boot which I can't do because the keyboard commands aren't recognized at that point. I need to figure a way to configure Puppy to boot automatically without any keystrokes. Any ideas?

about the keyboard, whether it is recognised or not.

I see what you say about Puppy and Grub, but even so BIOS POST is before any of that so neither Puppy nor Grub would have started to load during POST.

I've had this before where my keyboard connection slipped out without me knowing, and when I turned the system on POST reported "No keyboard", so I knew I was in trouble. Fortunately for me my solution was easy.

I know nothing about Linux so you may do better to repost this in our Linux forum here;
http://forums.cnet.com/linux-forum/?tag=contentMain;contentBody

Good luck.

Mark

Sorry - been busy for a few days and haven't been able to get back. I borrowed an old PS/2 keyboard from an old e machines system of about the same vintage and everything just worked! I had full control of my keyboard at boot, my "keyboard failure" message disappeared, and I was able to enter the command for my OS to boot. Lessoned learned: Don't be so pig-headed as to ignore the easy stuff! Thanks for your interest and suggestions, Mark.