BIOS/Keyboard malfuncioning don't allow me to boot anything

[m4kkin4]

hello everyone. a few months ago i finally had the budget to replace my old broken pc that well served me for more than a decade. i choose an all-an-one asus pc: et2400vxt. i really like it, it has many features (24'' touchscreen, nvidia 3d vision, act as a monitor and tv tuner...), and of course win7 preinstalled. it has an infrared mouse/keyboard set the functioning of wich drove me crazy in the last few days: it works diring the post, allowing me to enter the bios (that DOESN'T work properly, but here it's of no interest), but than it doesn't work anymore. it doesn't work when i boot an iso from optical or USB device, and it doesn't work in the windows wrong/arrest menu. as a result i wasn't able even to boot a live distro (actually one but not GNU: Android 2.0 not even 4.0). what i found odd is that with another keyboard i wasn't even able to enter the bios. now, it is pretty clear to me that, at least until a bios update helps me, the only way to have linux running on this machine is by installing it on an external drive. about this i understood that the only/easyest way to do it without the risk that the bootloader installation writes something on the hd is to disable/remove it before the process. i can't do it from my bios, so the only way i can do it is by using my laptop. my real problem is the feeling that i miss something about the keyboard that could "normalize" the whole thing. any suggestion?

[ktech11]

I am sorry, I am having a hard time following your post. A couple of questions:
1. Does a wired keyboard work in the BIOS?
2. When you put a live disc in does it boot?
3. Are you trying to dual boot or just run linux?

[m4kkin4]

you're right. i tried to write the essential, but i realize it's not much
1. No. a wired keybaord doesn't work in the post, doesn't work in the bios. but bios itself is a mess. anyway only with the wireless keyboard i can press esc and select the boot.
2. No. i tried several usb sticks and a couple bourned cd. particularry i tried a fedora 16 64 bit live cd that stops giving me an error message that i can reproduce and post. the same cd worked fine on the laptop.
this fact and the fact that booted an andriod 2 x86 porting made me think to the keyboard, because android may require no keyboard.
3 if i can't use the keyboard with the bootloader i can't dual-boot from hard-drive. "at the end" i'd like to have a setting like my netbook's one: no bootloader on the hard drive and a syslinux usb-key bootloader. i have slackware13.37 installed this way.
but i'm not sure what distro to install. "to begin" i want a disrto just running

the error code displayed when fedora live cd freezes is:
[ 2.646572] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: 0x6c95: i2c rd fail: -6

[ktech11]

Does the keyboard and mouse that came with it function normally under the pre-installed OS?
nouveau is related to your graphics, so there may be an issue with that. Can you pass any commands when you boot? You may want to try the nomodeset command

[m4kkin4]

keyboard and mouse work after the boot of the system, even android from usb stick. they work in the post, they work in the bios, they don't work with the syslinux keys/burned iso booted, they don't work if i arrest windows improperly and it shows the black menu. the on-board videocard is nvidia geforce gtx460m. the cpu is an 8-core i7. the 64 bit live cd that displayed the message worked on my hp dv6000 amd turion dual core with also nvidia videocard (of course much older)

[ktech11]

I think it is an issue with video from the error message you posted.

[m4kkin4]

i can belive it. but there must be something before. i mean: i use usb sticks to test the live distros using unebootin that creates a syslinux bootable disc. now i boot it and the first menu appears and here keyboard and mouse don't work. then it boots with the default and freezes. this can be due to a video issue, but the non-funcioning of the keyboard i think is another thing

[ktech11]

For the keyboard, it amazes me that a wired keyboard does not work from post. I know you said the BIOS is a nightmare, but check in there and see if there is a setting disabling it or something of the like.

[m4kkin4]

it amazes me too. the BIOS is like i videogame, i'll describe it.
i boot the system, press esc, a little menu appears where i can choose boot device or enter setup. up and down arrows and enter keys are required and they work.
then if i boot a device it happens what described previously, if i enter the bios this is the situation: left and right arrows keys work and let me switch the tabs of the menus, but up and down keys required for the sub-menus navigation dont'work fine. the focus is on the first row of each menu, if i press the up key nothing appens, if i press the down key focus seem to go to the next row but when i release it focus go back to the first row.
if i press the pag down key. it start scrolling by itself from the botton to the top, here is the only way i can hit a row with the enter key. but still to apply changes it is a two rows little menu rapidely switching, so it' 50-50 odds everytime. a strange thing happens here that i didn't mention: touchscreen (mis)works somehow like the keyboard. i think to remenber that mouse don't works.
anyway in the boot menu there's nothing like usb legacy support or similar.

[ktech11]

What happens if you use tab on the top row to get sub menus to open? Is there a legend at the bottom of the BIOS screen to help you navigate?