Inspiron 1525 -- keyboard not working, need BIOS access, help!

Hi all,

A friend gave me her Dell Inspiron 1525. She was considering throwing it in the garbage bin and buying another one, but I asked if I could have a look at it. The keyboard cable does not stay put in the keyboard connector latch, not sure why. Try as I may, I am unable to make contact (it's possible that the keyboard itself is hosed -- she mentioned she dropped yoghurt on it a while ago), so I am without keyboard. I also get a message saying "Internal hard disk drive not found", and another saying "The AC power adapter wattage and type cannot be determined". Both the HDD and the power brick are the original ones which came with the laptop.

At this point, I don't care about the power adapter warning; all I wanted was to get a Linux USB flash drive to boot the PC from, bypassing the HDD. For that, I need to get into the BIOS, but I have no keyboard! Is there any way to get into the BIOS without the keyboard?

Stuff I've tried:

1) Removing the battery. Still get the power adapter warning.
2) Reseating the HDD. Still get the HDD warning. Unfortunately I have no other HDD to test, but I can use a flash drive to boot Linux. But for that, I need BIOS access.
3) Removing the keyboard and, using my fingers, try as much as I can to make contact between the flat cable and the connector. No dice, I still cannot get key presses to register.



Thanks in advance,
HK

 

Use an external keyboard? Otherwise, no, I don't believe there is anything you can do.

 

Yeah, in the meantime I thought of that (pretty dumb of me not trying it in the first place).

I told the unit to run diagnostics, and it outputs an error code 2000-0141: No hard drive detected. I'm starting to think the drive has died, but at least now I can tell it to boot from Linux.

Will keep you guys posted.