From: Bruce on
Dimension 4550
Dell USB Keyboard

When I restart my machine, the POST screen gives me keyboard failure, and
the keyboard will not light up. It finally lights up at the Welcome
screen

I want to enter Safe Mode, or Set Up, but I can't due to the keyboard not
being recognized early in the boot up process.

It dawned on me that the USB keyboard failure may be due to a setting I
made in the BIOS a few weeks ago. After installing a Canon printer, the
machine would hang at the boot screen. Canon advised me to turn off USB
Emulation in the Legacy Devices section of the BIOS. (Don't know if
conflict was with the USB printer itself, or onboard multi-card reader.)
This worked.

Guess I have to install a non-USB keyboard to talk to machine during
POST. Seems dumb, but do you think this is the problem?

From: Tom Scales on

"Bruce" <parcxman(a)netscape.net> wrote in message
news:Xns981E8451033Fparcxmannetscapenet(a)216.196.97.136...
> Dimension 4550
> Dell USB Keyboard
>
> When I restart my machine, the POST screen gives me keyboard failure, and
> the keyboard will not light up. It finally lights up at the Welcome
> screen
>
> I want to enter Safe Mode, or Set Up, but I can't due to the keyboard not
> being recognized early in the boot up process.
>
> It dawned on me that the USB keyboard failure may be due to a setting I
> made in the BIOS a few weeks ago. After installing a Canon printer, the
> machine would hang at the boot screen. Canon advised me to turn off USB
> Emulation in the Legacy Devices section of the BIOS. (Don't know if
> conflict was with the USB printer itself, or onboard multi-card reader.)
> This worked.
>
> Guess I have to install a non-USB keyboard to talk to machine during
> POST. Seems dumb, but do you think this is the problem?
>

Yes


From: pen on

"Bruce" <parcxman(a)netscape.net> wrote in message
news:Xns981E8451033Fparcxmannetscapenet(a)216.196.97.136...
> Dimension 4550
> Dell USB Keyboard
>
> When I restart my machine, the POST screen gives me keyboard failure, and
> the keyboard will not light up. It finally lights up at the Welcome
> screen
>
> I want to enter Safe Mode, or Set Up, but I can't due to the keyboard not
> being recognized early in the boot up process.
>
> It dawned on me that the USB keyboard failure may be due to a setting I
> made in the BIOS a few weeks ago. After installing a Canon printer, the
> machine would hang at the boot screen. Canon advised me to turn off USB
> Emulation in the Legacy Devices section of the BIOS. (Don't know if
> conflict was with the USB printer itself, or onboard multi-card reader.)
> This worked.
>
> Guess I have to install a non-USB keyboard to talk to machine during
> POST. Seems dumb, but do you think this is the problem?

Check your BIOS version. The last one, A08 updated the USB to fix problems
with
multi-function devices. This might let you turn the USB support back on.
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R67246&SystemID=DIM_PNT_P4_4550&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=308&devlib=0&typecnt=1&vercnt=7&formatcnt=3&libid=1&fileid=87198