After the reboot I can not get past the bios boot phase. Once the system goes to the normal login page I have no HDI devices since they are all USB oriented. Given the devices work during the bios boot, or also during a boot disk recovery attempt, the keyboard and mouse are apparently unrecognized. I have tried moving the devices to every USB port with no change.
I assume this is a software problem with the stored device configurations. There also must be a "place" the system goes for device drivers during the second phase of boot to configure the USB ports for use by a user. I arrive at this conclusion because the ports work during the bios boot and then don't once past that point. So either a ROM/CMOS read is read or a boot partition configuration is read from disk to continue to the login step so that the USBs are corrupted or missing drivers and quit working.
Online supprt had me remove the battery from the CMOS ROM on the motherbard so the configuration is purged keeping that from effecting the reboot. That did get me to a point where I could jump into a bios controlled boot with more options but nothing that let me get past the problem of the "dead" keyboard/mouse.
I also have used external ROM reboot via the network card and have a boot disk and a operating system disk that I can get to a diagnostic "repair" boot step that presumably allows a restore of "critical" drivers but once again the reboot goes to the login page without fixing the USB issues.
So I have managed to "brick" my Aurora system and need HELP !!!!!
If you have any ideas I am open to trying them! Please submit some ideas for me to try .......
P.S. -- Dell support believes it may take a new motherboard to fix this problem, but I am skeptical of this being a H/W problem since the ports work then don't at reboot login !!!!!
