I figured I would post this in Laptops Etc. because this wouldn't really be a problem on a PC, for reasons which will become evident.

I was eagerly awaiting the Thanksgiving weekend because it happened to coincide rather cleanly with the FC10 release. I have FC9 and I want to upgrade and try it out. A few weeks ago, however, a glass of water was spilled upon my laptop, and as a result, the four, six, and eight keys, the spacebar, and all of my Function keys are toast. (For anyone curious, I happen to be pasting a space in wherever necessary... quite tiresome.) In any case, my laptop BIOS currently has CD/DVD at the bottom of the boot order, and I need my F2 key, which is no longer with us, to access the BIOS setup and change the boot order. Needless to say, I am unable to change it. I can not find any methods of changing the BIOS from either Windows or Linux, and I have thus far found absolutely no way of booting a CD or DVD from Grub, apart from SBM, which will not work for some reason (it gives me a "0xAA!" error when I try to select the "CD-ROM" option, and I can find no documentation, much less good documentation, on SBM, so I figure I'm probably doing something wrong anyway).

Q: How can I upgrade from FC9 to FC10 under the given circumstances?

All I want to do is install Fedora 10... I long to access its hidden secrets. :P Seriously, if anyone has any answers I would appreciate them tremendously. Short answers, lengthy answers, anything will do.

Thank you,
Dio

Getting a new laptop springs to mind.....

Seriously, if you've got dead pieces of hardware, fixing that should be the first thing you do.

Very true. I'm currently waiting about a month to be able to afford a new keyboard. The keyboard is the only thing wrong with it, for the most part. I have a Toshiba Satellite, and those keyboards run about 55 dollars, which is pushing my budget a bit. Meanwhile, I would still like to upgrade my distro...

Can you plug a cheap external keyboard in for your install? Seems like the easiest way out until you can fix the internal one.

That's not a bad idea. All I have at the moment is an old PS/2 keyboard, and my laptop lacks an appropriate port for that. I'll dig out a USB keyboard asap and give it a shot, though I'm not sure how my BIOS will handle that, if at all.

No luck... my BIOS doesn't recognise USB devices evidently.
Grub can't boot DVDs, can it? I didn't think so, but I'm just grasping for straws at this point.

Their are a few ways to this.

This worked for me some time ago:
http://cutecomputer.wordpress.com/20...-through-grub/

Edit: Did you consider upgrading with yum?

Ah, see, I wish I'd thought of that. I know Ubuntu can upgrade via software, but for some reason I never thought to find out if Fedora can. I think I just took my DVD drive for granted. I would like to give the DVD-from-Grub method a try just for the sake of curiosity.
Thank you, everybody. I appreciate all the help!

Diomedes

pull the key board out and clean the contacts
You may be able to talk a repair person into
showing you how to get to the contacts (or you might have to pay hem to show you)
the keyboard is shot unless you can get those keys to work
so your out nothing if you destroy the keyboard