(OT) Dell Inspiron Laptop, Win XP, MoBo Test ?

[Tom Metro]

Paul Courchene wrote:
> Many keys (or Keyboard) will not produce. 
> (Same indications using USB Keyboard as well...)

You tried an external USB keyboard and found an identical pattern of 
keys not working?

It's difficult to think of a hardware scenario that would cause a 
consistent partial failure of a built-in keyboard as well as a USB 
keyboard, yet leave the machine working well enough to successfully boot 
he OS.

Perhaps BIOS corruption might cause this, but far more likely it is an 
OS problem.

I second the recommendation to try a Linux Live CD.


> is there a way to check smaller seqments of system functionality
> or isolate MoBo functions?

There are - or at least used to be - utilities for exercising the 
hardware, but with the wide diversity of hardware that isn't supported 
directly by the BIOS, you pretty much need an OS with a full complement 
of drivers. So after you boot up Windows, go to the device manager and 
see if anything is flagged as not working. Or boot up Linux and examine 
the output of dmesg.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/