AZ: Fear & Loathing in the land of Microsoft

[AgentZero]

Tips hat to Strategia

Right. I've decided that my system is suficiently fubared to require a format & reinstall, but I've run into a wee problem. When I run the installer, my (Microsoft, of all things) keyboard doesn't work. It's got the lights on when the machine boots up, they stay on while the installer is copying all the initial files, and then go off when the you get to the 'Starting Windows Setup' phase, just before the first screen comes up asking you which partition you want to install on.

I've tried everything I can think of, just having the keyboard alone plugged in, and tried every USB port on the machine, all to the same effect. I was thinking to maybe disable one of the USB controllers until I found out I only had one.

Does anybody have any ideas on what to do? Besides eviscerating the WinXP programmers, coz aside from making me feel better, that won't help.