If you can press "F1" and continue with the boot then the keyboard is "working". But, if you can't press F2 to access the BIOS, maybe it's just a bad F2 key on the keyboard?
If the F2 key works OK in Windows, try resetting the CMOS (BIOS) and see if that helps. On most Dell's, removing the CR2032 CMOS backup battery for about 10 minutes will reset the BIOS.
It just seems to work if I restart the computer 10 times, unplug the keyboard and move it to another usb back and forth for about 5 minutes, one time it will respond. I'm not sure why. Unfortunately when I hit continue it takes me to a windows boot menu where I have to pick out of one choice which windows I want to get into which is Win7. At this point I usually give up messing with the computer.
Do you have a lot of power hungry USB devices connected to this PC? Try disconnecting all of them, except mouse and keyboard.
You can also try this. Power off and unplug. Press/hold the power button for ~15 sec and leave it unplugged for an hour or so. Then see what happens when you reboot.
Tried both those, I've tried remove everything unneeded such as stereo, mouse ect,. I've also tried leaving it off all last night without the CMOS battery. No change. I have however managed to make it into Windows again and then flash the bios for 630i to 1.0.13 bios for Dell. However this also has had no effect.
I wonder if the video card is causing the problems? There was a recent post of problems with devices and it turned out to be the video card. The user removed the video card and installed a different one and no more problems. If you have a different Video card, try that.
Do you have (or can you borrow) an externally powered USB hub - one with its own power brick? Or maybe you can buy one from somewhere where you can easily return it? :emotion-5:
Plug the USB hub's power brick into the wall and connect it to a rear USB port on the PC. Connect the keyboard through the hub. There have been reports of problems like yours on these forums where a powered hub solved the problem, so maybe you'll be lucky too.
In a couple of cases, after the PC booted, they could move the keyboard to a different rear USB port, and after rebooting, it was recognized without the powered hub and they could get into BIOS setup.
No promises this will fix your problem and don't ask me to explain the "logic" behind this. :emotion-15:
But even if you have to continue using the powered hub, it's a reasonable work-around.
fireberd
9 Legend
•
33.4K Posts
0
September 19th, 2010 04:00
If you can press "F1" and continue with the boot then the keyboard is "working". But, if you can't press F2 to access the BIOS, maybe it's just a bad F2 key on the keyboard?
If the F2 key works OK in Windows, try resetting the CMOS (BIOS) and see if that helps. On most Dell's, removing the CR2032 CMOS backup battery for about 10 minutes will reset the BIOS.
Volomon
6 Posts
0
September 19th, 2010 12:00
It just seems to work if I restart the computer 10 times, unplug the keyboard and move it to another usb back and forth for about 5 minutes, one time it will respond. I'm not sure why. Unfortunately when I hit continue it takes me to a windows boot menu where I have to pick out of one choice which windows I want to get into which is Win7. At this point I usually give up messing with the computer.
I've also reset the Bios with no change at all.
RoHe
10 Elder
•
45.2K Posts
0
September 19th, 2010 13:00
Do you have a lot of power hungry USB devices connected to this PC? Try disconnecting all of them, except mouse and keyboard.
You can also try this. Power off and unplug. Press/hold the power button for ~15 sec and leave it unplugged for an hour or so. Then see what happens when you reboot.
Volomon
6 Posts
0
September 19th, 2010 16:00
Tried both those, I've tried remove everything unneeded such as stereo, mouse ect,. I've also tried leaving it off all last night without the CMOS battery. No change. I have however managed to make it into Windows again and then flash the bios for 630i to 1.0.13 bios for Dell. However this also has had no effect.
fireberd
9 Legend
•
33.4K Posts
0
September 19th, 2010 16:00
I wonder if the video card is causing the problems? There was a recent post of problems with devices and it turned out to be the video card. The user removed the video card and installed a different one and no more problems. If you have a different Video card, try that.
Volomon
6 Posts
0
September 21st, 2010 14:00
No luck, anyone got any more suggestions?
RoHe
10 Elder
•
45.2K Posts
0
September 21st, 2010 19:00
Do you have (or can you borrow) an externally powered USB hub - one with its own power brick? Or maybe you can buy one from somewhere where you can easily return it? :emotion-5:
Plug the USB hub's power brick into the wall and connect it to a rear USB port on the PC. Connect the keyboard through the hub. There have been reports of problems like yours on these forums where a powered hub solved the problem, so maybe you'll be lucky too.
In a couple of cases, after the PC booted, they could move the keyboard to a different rear USB port, and after rebooting, it was recognized without the powered hub and they could get into BIOS setup.
No promises this will fix your problem and don't ask me to explain the "logic" behind this. :emotion-15:
But even if you have to continue using the powered hub, it's a reasonable work-around.
Ron