Keyboard Failure Dell Inspiron 580

Hello again,
I've got a customer with what sounds like a memory issue. I want to run Memtest86+ on it, but there is an issue. On bootup, I get "keyboard failure" and I can't enter the BIOS to change the boot device priority so that I can load Memtest86+ from a flash drive or cd. The keyboard works fine once I'm into Windows, but I can't use it before Windows loads.
Things tried:
Reset CMOS.
Unplugged all other usb devices, including card reader internally.
Checked device manager, looks clean.

Thanks for any help.

 

Couple of other things I forgot to mention... I also tried sfc /scannow, and there are no PS/2 ports on the motherboard. USB only.

 

I saw that also.

 

If keyboard is not plugged into a rear USB port try that because they have a bit more power.

I can't imagine a motherboard with no PS/2 ports having an option in BIOS to disable USB so I don't think that would be the issue. You couldn't get into BIOS anyway to change it but I'm just saying that shouldn't be relevant to your situation should you come across that in your search. Edit: I see there is a setting to disable USB but it is enabled by default so clearing CMOS would have set it to enabled.

Also saw this:

Have you tried another keyboard just to rule out that a non-printing key on the keyboard could be sticking/repeating?

 

This link is for a different Dell but it has some good ideas on getting the keyboard to work. One was to turn the computer off and make sure the keyboard is in the rear top left port looking at the back. A BIOS flash also helped but I would think that is a last resort.

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-groups/new-to-community/f/3511/t/19255640.aspx

 

I did not have enough time to edit my post but you might want to cruise through this thread, 10 pages on Dell keyboard failure.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/18438400.aspx?PageIndex=1

 

Interesting,
I'll give it a look.

 

I am working on getting a different keyboard.

 

Interesting read. I've tried most of the things mentioned in those posts, short of a BIOS update. However, it looks like a BIOS update made the situation worse for some people, requiring a floppy disk in a non-existant floppy drive and requiring "F1 to continue" with no keyboard recognized. I don't really want to make the situation worse.
But anyway, as it turns out, I may be barking up the wrong tree anyway. I don't know how reliable MemTest by HCI Design (a Windows-based RAM tester) is, but it came up with 0 memory errors over the course of about an hour of running (over 100% coverage). I'm willing to concede that I'm not going to be able to run MemTest86+ as long as MemTest by HCI Design is reliable. I'll make a different post about this customer's main problem (computer shuts off randomly while running programs or trying to print). Thanks for the tips guys and gals.

 

Switching to a different keyboard did the trick.

 

Interesting that it worked fine in Windows but not BIOS. Thanks for letting us know.