I tried to install Fedora on my HP5185 Laptop. Like the past RH releases the keyboard stops working on boot. I know that I can get it going with "nousb" option (I have a usb mouse) or tap the keyboard during boot.

This is not all that uncommon for me. Gentoo, Yoper, Slackware, DemoLinux all had dead keyboards. The keyboard would work after the Xserver started and I was in KDE (or GNOME) but in Fedora it does not.

I tried to cntrl-alt-back to refresh the XF86Config but to no avail. Seems all other distros Ive used were able to start the keyboard we the boot was complete but Fedora could not.

Any ideas?

I am a long time Mandrake user (keyboard always works) but really like the look&feel of Bluecurve. Now that Fedora is around, and more of a desktop distro Id like to give it a go. Just refuse to tap my keyboard each time I boot to get it working.

I have had this problem before, with an HP laptop.

When you boot, hit F2 and enter the bios setup screen.
Find the option labelled: Support for usb legacy devices.
Disable it.

You should not need to use the nousb boot flag after that.

If you have already tried this, I am not sure what else could
be the problem.

Engmar

Ill try it when I get home.

Any clue why It only does it with RH / Fedora? on HP laptops?

To tell you the truth, I don't know why there would only be problems
with RH/Fedora. I would put money on Mandrake having the same
difficulty though.

I had come accross postings about disabling support for legacy
devices before I ever put linux on this machine last March. I do
know the option ( in bios ) when enabled allows one to boot from
usb devices. I also know that HP has done many many unorthodox
things in their bios'. On their laptop motherboards period.

Let me know if the bios switch worked.

Engmar

Well I could never get it to install on my laptop now.

During the installing image to hard drive portion it stops and tells me unable to transfer image no hard drive space.

I would do a fresh partition (with PQ magic / keeping hda1 as NTFS untouched) and nogo. Funny thing is every time I got the error then booted to M$ XP and started up PQ magic it would tell me I have some "CHS error" and PQ magic would fix it.

It was also weird that it would Identify my / (root) partition as a ext2 not a ext3. I saw that my /home /usr was ext3 but not the / directory.

grabbed my MDK9.2 disk and 1 hour later Im up and running. Ill try fedora on my backup computer. I was looking forward to Fedora on my laptop.

By the way I did disable usb legacy...and my usb printer (
LEXMARK Z82) stopped working in M$ XP.