freebsd stable - Mar 2006 - Can't boot up into Setup -- SOLVED!

Dear Miguel and friends:

A million thanks for your suggestion to try another keyboard. You were 
right on the money! I tried a cheap Micro Ergonomic keyboard ($15) and 
instantly my Dell 8200 responded when I hit F2 and opened up the Setup. 
And, imagine, I spent $56 on the Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard at Office 
Depot. Who would have guessed?

So, that problem has been solved.

Benjamin

Dear friends:

Sorry to report that the issue may be more complicated.

1) I played around with the $15 Micro keyboard that successfully allowed 
access to my Setup. I set the boot sequence for the CD Rom and inserted 
my Win XP Pro OS CD. I then saved the settings and let it boot. It 
brought up the line about booting from the CD. So, I clicked hoping that 
this would allow me to bring up the WinXP CD. Instead, I got the same 
"Click on F1 to retry Setup or Click on F12 for boot menu." When I 
clicked on these options, I ended up in a loop.

2) I have a DVD player drive (for movies, etc) that is listed as one of 
the drives (listed as "OFF", volume=Unknown). Options when clicking on
it: OFF or n/a. Unfortunately, the boot sequence lists only three 
options: Floppy, Hard Disk, IDE CD ROM. But NOT the DVD drive.

I was considering buying the latest Linux Format magazine with the 
FreeBSD DVD, but now it seems that, due to the restrictions of my BIOS, 
I will not be able to install anything from this DVD into my second hard 
drive. Is that true?

Thank you all so much.

Benjamin

Benjamin Sher wrote:
> Dear Miguel and friends:
> 
> A million thanks for your suggestion to try another keyboard. You were
> right on the money! I tried a cheap Micro Ergonomic keyboard ($15) and
> instantly my Dell 8200 responded when I hit F2 and opened up the Setup.
> And, imagine, I spent $56 on the Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard at Office
> Depot. Who would have guessed?
> 
> So, that problem has been solved.
> 
> Benjamin
You should have checked out the FAQ:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/funnies.html#LETMEOUTOFHERE

You're pretty lucky that your soul wasn't damned  ;)