I hate you, computer. You need a keyboard to boot? Why?! And under what circumstance would even be able to push the fucking F1 key if I don’t have a gorram keyboard?! Who in their right goddamn mind even took the time to code that? Someone with a sick sense of humor, that’s who! I am so angry right now. I bought a USB keyboard for my new computer. Guess what? USB drivers aren’t loaded until after boot!
Oh, my oh-so helpful friend points out that you can change a setting in the BIOS so that USB drivers are loaded first, or to bypass the error message altogether. But you know what you need to change those BIOS options? A FUCKING KEYBOARD!! :mad::mad::mad:
I think the idea is that you plug the keyboard in, and then press F1 to let the computer know you’re ready to continue. Not that you’re probably much interested in hearing logic at this point. I feel you, though. A little while, I had to reformat my dad’s hard disk and reinstall Windows. Except for some goddamn reason, his monitor goes into sleep mode and won’t come out of it until windows has launched. So I had to play “Guess the key combo” until I could figure out what I needed to press to access the BIOS so I could get the damned computer to boot from a CD, so I could install Windows.
Slightly more communicative, though barely more helpful than:
Beeeeeeeep beep beep … beeeeeeeep beep beep … beeeeeeeep beep beep … beeeeeeeep beep beep …
(how many people saw this, hit GQ mode and thought to let Cap’n know that they can turn off “halt on errors” or some such in BIOS… only to realize that if he could change the BIOS screen, he’d have a working keyboard. What, just me? Egad I’m an idjit)
This Is A Public Service Announcement…WITH GUITAR.
All USB ports are not created equal.
All the USB ports on a computer are not connected to the same USB chip, they are often not even all connected to the same type of chip. So if you have trouble with a USB device, try all the USB ports on the computer.
(I know that may not help the OP. But this seemed like a good place to mention something that many people are not aware of. And to use a cool line from The Clash.)
I found an old PS2 keyboard in a closet I used to get past the problem. If I hadn’t had this, however, I would have been screwed I think. It isn’t that it was an insurmountable obstacle, it was that it shouldn’t even be a feature to begin with. I can’t think of a single circumstance in which I would want to specifically not boot if there weren’t a keyboard attached. What good would that do anyone?
WAG: if you have certain things in your startup file or other OS happenings and the machine goes past POST and BIOS screens, you may end up in a situation where you can’t power down without mucking something else up. Halting on error allows shutting down safely. This may not be an issue with more stable, modern OSs, but I remember Win 3.1/95 being very crabby about improper shutdowns. No idea about other OSs.
Hehehe. I still keep my trusty old junk keyboard (AT connector with a ps2 adaptor!) for precisely these kind of events. I feel your pain, having been there many many times myself.
Well, IIRC in the good old days computers wouldn’t recognise a keyboard plugged in after the boot sequence had completed. So it would be a major pisser finding that:
[ul][li]Your machine had spent 5 minutes booting up but you couldn’t do anything with it because you had forgotten to plug in the keyboard[]It would take the thing a while to shut down and then boot up again after you plugged the keyboard in[]There was no keyboard attached with which you could log in and then shut the thing down properly - so you’d have to use the reset or power switch[/li][/ul]
Much better for the machine to basically pause and tell you “I’m not doing anything until you plug in a keyboard and then press F1, you forgetful eejit”.
I think most Unix distros used to be (and quite possibly still are) really crabby about ever shutting down at all. I used to use an old NMR that interfaced with an old Sparc workstation running some old version of Solaris (7 or 8, I think.) I idly read the manual from time to time while waiting for runs to finish and there was a very long procedure detailed in how to shut down the system. You needed to unmount the disks to prevent corruption and do a number of other tasks.
“Oh for fsck sake, I forgot to unmount the disks again.”
Indeed. And just try doing that long shutdown procedure with no keyboard and no other machine to rlogin from. Doh! Cue a very long disk scan.
Agreed. I can only plug my keyboard into a single very specific USB port on my machine or everything goes wonky. Everything else I can plug in wherever I like.
I know you have solved your problem but I wanted to empathize too. It used to drive me crazy. And…how am I supposed to go into the BIOS anyway if it doesn’t boot the keyboard until later?
)