Wired Keyboard in Safe Mode

I feel like an idiot for asking this but it appears that my wired keyboard has no instructions to boot in safe mode or safe mode with networking. How and where can I add the command to boot it up along with everything else?

 

You don't. Shut the machine down, and then reboot to check to make sure that "Legacy USB" devices is turned on in the bios, if you are using a USB keyboard, vs. a older style. Then when you boot and go into Safe mode, it should work.

Also, you can not use two keyboards or mice at the same time. What is the manuf. & model number of the computer, and what operating system?

 

This is an old HP keyboard which does not attach using a USB plug but an old one (none of the multi-media buttons are on this) and the computer is an 8 year old Dell running XP professional with SP3. While I am not too bad with the Windows stuff, the bios scares me (she says red-faced). I thought about just uninstalling the keyboard and unplugging it and then rebooting and reconnecting to see if that would solve the issue but then it occurred to me that would not change the settings in safe. Correct? Virtual keyboard works but it's a pain.:-o

 

If you just go in and look at the bios settings, nothing will happen. As for the old keyboard, it is probably broke, and you need to just replace it. The new ones are USB, but they come with the adapter to plug them into the older style keyboard port.

 

Thanks for the reassurance on the bios. I will give it a shot and now have a little more confidence that I won't break anything!

 

I agree because you should NOT have to mess with Legacy USB support settings in the BIOS. That setting is to enable USB support when using operating systems that do NOT have USB support built in (MS-DOS, for example). XP and later versions of Windows natively support USB, so you should leave that BIOS setting at the default.

 

Actually HAL does not come into effect until after the bootstrap has loaded. You still have to enable legacy USB support for a lot of older computers (anything over six years old, due to most have not had updated bios firmware for the past four or five years), due to their bios does not see USB keyboards or mice, until the OS has fully loaded.

 

Problem solved! Bought a USB keyboard and plugged it in. Rebooted. Shut down and rebooted into safe mode and voila! It works perfectly and no need to go to the terrible BIOS-land. Thanks for all of the help and advice. You guys are truly gems.

 

Great! Glad you got it sorted out and thanks for the followup.