What's up with my keyboard?

[Mofo Rising]

I just built myself a new computer, mostly from the ground up. New motherboard, CPU, graphics card, case and all that. Everything is working together tip-top, except for the keyboard. For some reason my computer will not recognize it unless I press a button during the start-up process. If I haven't touched the keyboard by the time Windows starts up (I'm running ME), then I'm S.O.L. as far as the keyboard's concerned, unless I restart Windows.

It's not that big of a deal, but I've never had this problem before, on any computer. It's also one more thing I don't want to worry about. Any ideas on what the deal is?

By the way, I have the keyboard plugged into the standard PS/2 port on the motherboard.

[rjk]

Sounds most likely to be a bad connection or a bad keyboard. I'll assume you're running Windows. Things to try (even though you've probably done them already):

- Power down, unplug, and plug it in again.

- If no good, power down and check inside the case for loose connections to the motherboard. (This probably isn't it, but it's easy.)

- Get another keyboard and try that.

- Go to Device Manager and check for conflicts. If not (or even if you just feel like it, even though it's draconian and you might need to re-install), delete the keyboard and reboot. Windows should find it (otherwise 'Add new Hardware' from Control Panel) and offer you the choice of reloading the drivers. Do so. Alternatively, format the drive and re-install Windows.

- If none of that works, maybe it's the motherboard. Or the machine could just be cursed.

[handy]

Did you turn on the ps/2 keyboard port in the bios if it has such a setting? Sometimes you have to enable it there.