[Tfug] A drop-dead funny Windows story...

[Jim March]

OK.  So I had gotten that panicky phone call from a client saying on
boot, the machine was reporting "board failure". We talked about that.

I get there this AM, take one look and...wait.  Yeah, it says that, but...

This was an LCD set up for the 1024x768 resolution she runs in
windows.  But on boot, it's 640x480.  So the text display was a bit
"skewed" to the left.

On a hunch, I reboot and rapidly hit the "monitor frequency reset" on
the monitor.  Yup.  It was skewed to the left by three characters.

Anybody wanna guess what the three letters before "board" were?

Yup.

Some of you are giggling already.

"Key".

The batteries in her wireless keyboard had died.

ARG!

So forget all that XP/motherboard crap we were talkin' about :).  BUT
the story goes on.

With fresh batteries, I couldn't get the keyboard to sync up to it's
RF base station - this was an aftermarket Logitech setup.  She had had
this problem years earlier and had a printout of a Logitech tech
bulletin explaining the fix: the mouse will auto-sync OK but you have
to go into Windows and use their control-panel gizmo to sync the
keyboard.

Except she had an XP password.  Which meant typing to start
Windows...except no keyboard...ARG.

So I drive home, grab my USB keyboard...

:)

Jim