Thank you! I was wondering about the USB keyboard! We noted when we tried
booting from the XP floppies that they keyboard commands weren't taking. (My
younger son was helping at this time.) He actually got all the 6 disks
through by carefully timing the changing of disks by the light on the floppy
drive. It was amazing to watch. However, when he got to the final disk ( I
knew this would happen), you have to give it a command from the keyboard and,
of course, they keyboard wouldn't give the command.

We've actually looked around the house for a non-USB keyboard. We haven't
found one yet, but maybe our neighbors might have one we could borrow. (Now,
why, oh why, did we get rid of all those keyboards lying around?)

Thank you for confirming my suspicion about the USB keyboard and explaining
why it isn't working!
"VanguardLH" wrote:

> Grace wrote:
>
> > Sorry, VanguardLH...
> > I was replying to LV Travel. I apologize.
> >
> > In response to your advice, I can't even get to the correct setup area as
> > far as I can tell.
> >
> > Even when i boot from the XP Upgrade CD...I still get what looks like the
> > entire program booting up. (I.e. I still get the blue screen with me and
> > all my kids icons to select from.) This doesn't seem right to me, but it
> > does sound like my computer is booting from the cd when I "press any key to
> > boot from cd."
>
> If Windows is loading (and what you mean by the "full program") then you
> did not boot from the CD. Either you pressed a key too late when
> prompted after the POST screen, you are using a USB keyboard on a legacy
> host (so the USB keyboard is not yet recognized), or your BIOS is not
> configured to boot from the CD device *before* the hard disk device.
>
> If you are using a USB keyboard, it requires that you also use a host
> whose BIOS supports legacy USB devices (i.e., USB keyboard and USB
> mouse). If it doesn't, that USB device will not be recognized until the
> USB drivers are loaded by the OS. If the OS has loaded to load the USB
> driver(s) then it is too late to run anything from the install CD. Plug
> the keyboard into the PS/2 port for the keyboard (you may need to use a
> USB-to-PS2 adapter on the keyboard or get a PS/2 keyboard). Or boot
> into the BIOS and configure its BIOS to support legacy USB devices (but
> then the USB keyboard is dead so you can't even do the setup in BIOS and
> will still have to connect the keyboard to the PS/2 port).
>
> Because you saw the "press a key to boot from CD" message, it is likely
> that the BIOS is configured to boot from the CD drive (and hopefully it
> is configured so the CD/DVD device is listed before the hard disk device
> in the boot device sequence order in the BIOS). However, because it
> continue onto loading Windows even after you have hit a key make me
> think you are using a USB keyboard but your BIOS does not support legacy
> USB devices or hasn't been enabled to support them. You can hit the
> keys on your USB keyboard all you want but none of those keypresses will
> be recognized until the USB drivers are loaded by the OS and that is
> after the OS has already loaded.
>