I ran into an unexpected problem today and would like to share in this blog post how I fixed it.
You know that you can press F8 during start of the Windows operating system to get a troubleshooting menu with options to start Windows in Safe Mode or restoring the last known good configuration of the operating system.
My problem was that I could not get into the F8 menu no matter what I did. It simply would start Windows right away as if the keyboard was not working at all.
Note that this was prior to Windows 8 which changed significantly how you can enter the F8 menu due to it starting up significantly faster than previous versions of Windows.
The keyboard was working however because I was able to use it to enter the BIOS and change the BIOS configuration.
And then I remembered that it could have something to do with the connection of the keyboard. It was an USB keyboard.
I discovered two solutions that helped. The first was to go into the BIOS and enable USB Keyboard Support. This made it possible to press F8 and get into the menu that allowed me to boot into safe mode.
The other solution was to simply connect an old PS2 keyboard to the computer and use that for the time and remove it later on. I guess the problem is that Windows did not load the correct USB drivers so that hitting F8 at the right time did nothing because the keyboard was not working properly at that time.
The first solution is obviously better than the second as you don’t have to switch between two different keyboards whenever you need to enter troubleshooting mode. But, if for some reason, enabling USB keyboard support does not work for you, you may want to keep a PS2 keyboard in reach that you can then connect to the machine to make F8 work again.