PC fails to boot, keybaord not working

[arssa2020]

Hello all
my friend put together this desktop for me last year (p4 1.5 GHz, 1 GB RAM, dont remember the Mother board brand) WinXP Pro. it worked fine for about 6 months
then i stopped using it for about a year (i moved out of state, left it in storage) .

when i wanted to use it last week, i connected the power, it will start, pass the POST, then a windows Screen will show saying an error has occurred and it ask me whether i want to start the last good known configuration or start in safe mode, problem is my keyboard is not working at this point (dont know why, i used different PS2/USB keyboard but all didnt work)
so i cannot choose a boot option, it will choose "the last good configuration" when the timer expires after 30 seconds and the windows XP loading screen will show, it will then reboot :-(

what sort of problem should i look for? could it be Hardware or software?
Thanks

 

[DonNagual]

Is the keyboard a USB type?

Try a PS/2 connection and see if this allows you to use the keyboard. Can you use the keyboard when in the bios?

How about booting into "safe mode"?

 

[smore9648]

If you are using a USB. Make sure the PnP option is enabled in Bios.

Test the keyboards on another system and see if they work on those.

 

[arssa2020]

hello
thanks for the quick reply smore9648, DonNagual
so far i didnt try a Ps2 keyboard, i tried another usb keyboard

i went to the BIOS menu and was able to use the keyboard their, it works
i selected my boot device as pri master (my Hard-drive) --somehow it was set to nothing-- it looked like the BIOS settings were reset somehow but the time was correct ???

so i exited the BIOS, unfortunately the same problem still exists, the same bootup option show up ("en error has occurred....."), i cannot boot in safe mode cause the keyboard is not working .... the timer expires and it shows
the XP loading screen, it gets to the part where i c the mouse pointer
but then it fails, sometimes i see a blue screen of death with memory dump info (2 quick for me to capture it or understand what happened) and the same problem exists.

i inserted a WinXP pro boot up disc, i disabled booting from the HD, it says press any key to boot from CD, i press keys with no result, same thing still happens

its driving me crazy
Thanks all

 

[confused001]

Hello,
I'm not sure about this, but maybe you should let it boot into your safemode with the keyboard.
Unplug it, and then plug it back in, and see if your computer can detect the usb keyboard.
Maybe, might be bad ps/2 port, idon't know.

 

[arssa2020]

i cannot get it to boot in safe mode, as my usb keyboard doesnt work in that menu option and it only works in BIOS,i didnt try a ps2 keyboard so far

 

[confused001]

Hey, then what can you boot into?
Got any other operating systems?

 

[arssa2020]

hey as i said i cannot boot into winxp, it will automatically restart :-(