Usb keyboard not working during boot

Have you tried connecting your keyboard to various USB ports, including those on the front of your system? Does anything appear on the screen when you power the system on?

Also, if you place a bootable CD or DVD into the optical drive and there is no OS on the HDD, it should detect that condition and boot from the CD/DVD. Not to insult you, but have you tried that as well?

Good luck!

Yes I've tried connecting to every port, one of the front ones is broken though. Also after the BIOS screen there just is a white | and it just sits there. And yes I have tried putting a bootable disc in

Power down. Pull the CMOS/BIOS battery to hard reset the BIOS and see if it helps.

I have already tried pulling out the CMOS battery, overnight. I thought it would help but it only asked to enter setup which I can't do. Yeah...

I suspect your not hitting the right key to get into the bios. My keyboard dont light up til after post but if I hit the right key I can get into bios. try, Delete, ESC, F1, F2, Maybe even f8. Also look at the motherboard capacitors if any are bulging you USBs could be toast.

By pressing F12 you should get a boot options menu, then you can choose the CD to boot from.

If your keyboard is still not working, unplug everything that uses USB except your keyboard , both outside and inside the case, thing's like memory card readers and/or weird add'ons etc..., then powerup your computer and take another shot at it.


hope this help's , i have clients, with computers similar to yours and this problem occured a few times,
unpluging all usb devices and turning on computer always worked in the past.

Good luck, and let me know.

Ok now after BIOS it is saying about: Disk 0 seek failure Keyboard failure press f1 to continue or f2 to enter setup (I wish). Also I tried unplugging everything and nothing worked. Is the mobo defective and should I just start seeking a replacement one?

Seems like the mobo is toast at this point, unfortunately.

Try the following, just in case, make sure your keyboard is good by trying it on another computer.

also don't use a usb extension cable, plug keyboard directly to the use ports at the back,
not some sort of added usb port bracket.

Like before unplug anything not neccesary.

Turn on monitor then computer and it F2 , HAS SOON you see DELL blue LOGO, keep hitting the F2 key,
until either you get into it, or you ear some beep's, then wait and see, if you can get into the cmos settings.

Also do you have some sort of diagnostics led warnings ?



let me know.

Later

-------------
i heared beep sound then it wanted current password but my system doesnt have any; i pressed esc it sayed your pass is incorrect then i pressed f2 again nothing happend i had one choice "start windos normaly"  

Hi, This was driving me crazy until I saw on another forum to try an original Dell keyboard, which I did and straight away the keyboard worked and I could enter the BIOS and adjust it.

I recently acquired a Dell E521 and it had a Dell brand PSU of only 264 watts. After replacing it with a 620 watt PSU, it worked just fine (you can't get all the screws to fit in the casing, the Dell have specifc type fittings but two is enough to hold the PSU in place).

I use Dell keyboard and mouse, they do work better.

u only need to check your keyboard cable by opening your Dell E521 cover , maybe the cable need to be change.