hello guys, this morning when i turn on my pc, my keyboard isn't functioning. there is no power to the keyboard since there are no lights on the caps lock and num lock when i press it. but everytime i boot up, the light on the keyboard turns on then goes off, cant even use the del key to enter bios settings. a friend told me the ps/2 socket of the keyboard might be damaged. he advised me to buy a usb to ps/2 adapter so i could use my mouse and keyboard using the usb socket. the weird thing is that there is also no power at the keyboard after turning on the pc... but when i press the power button to have my pc on standby and then pressing it again to activate... thats the time the keyboard will function normally...by the way i have a 5 button mouse but the left and right buttons are the only ones functioning when using the usb socket. and that pressing of the power button trick does not work when i use the ps/2. what could be the cause of this mystery? im using athlon 1400, win me, microsoft ergo keyboard, microsoft 5 button intellimouse, epox 8k7a motherboard.

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First thing I would do is check to see if the keyboard is the problem or if it is a Windoze problem. I would plug the kb into the PS/2 port and use a boot floppy disk to boot up. See if you can type commands at the command prompt. If it works in DOS mode, you can also try Safe Mode and see if the keyboard works there. Let us know what you find out.

Have you went into control panel to look at your Mouse set up?> Did you install the software that came with your mouse?
As far as the keyboard goes, it sounds really weird. If you can't even get into BIOS then its not a windows problem. If you can make it work by pressing the standby button twice I wonder if its not soemthing in the BIOS itself or if its some kind of short in the keyboard cable. I don't have a stand by button, nor am I sure the what this is for. I disable all the standby and power saving features on my computers. I would try another keyboard first to rule out a cable problem. Then if the issue persists I would check the BIOS. Maybe the "keyboard present" function is set to no? Do you have the keyboard and mouse connectors switched?
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Are you using the power-button on the pc or the one on the keyboard?

There are a couple of ways of affecting how the power-button functions. In the BIOS and also at RClick-Desktop>>Properties>>ScreenSaver>>Power (or get here via the power settings in the control panel). Try disabling any suspend actions and only use on and off settings.