Everybody's Favorite (#1)
Here's probably one of the dumbest error messages ever produced:
Error: Keyboard not found. Press <F1 to continue
Upon boot, the PC BIOS checks to see whether is a keyboard is connected to the motherboard. If none is connected, the message above is displayed, the BIOS software waits indefinitely for the user to hit <F1 on a non-existent keyboard. The reason why this is ludicrous is obvious. The message is still produced by modern BIOS (AMI, Award, and others) firmware installed in the latest hardware.
This is exceptionally troublesome, especially when you have several NT machines in a rack. The keyboard is normally not connected to either machine. If NT reaches a critical-error, it reboots automatically. And, hangs, of course during boot with the error message on-screen.
The only progress I've seen in terms of eliminating this useless message is an option in newer BIOS's that allows the user to disable the waiting for the F1 key to continue the boot process. Definitely a step in the right direction. It would be moronic to lose information from an error like this and be in need of data recovery.
Raphael SalomonSubmitted by
As annoying error messages go, this is the one that comes to mind the most often and has been submitted numerous times (as well as having been discussed at some length in Developing Windows Error Messages).
As for the racked NT machines, aside from the BIOS option to disable the keyboard test, there have also been dummy keyboard plugs on the market which 'simulated' the presence of a keyboard.
However, the message - while poorly phrased - is not entirely useless since it does provide a prompt if the keyboard connector is loose ... which is better than just letting people type away and wonder why nothing happens.
Steve Clayton writes to comment:
Greetings..
I was reading the results of the error message contest and curious about something..
I agree the F1 keyboard missing message can be quite irritating. However almost every < recent > bios I have worked with has a setting for telling the computer it has no keyboard. Just so you can unplug the keyboard after setup and leave a server sitting without one..
Other than that, I love the page..
Rafael did mention the BIOS option found on newer machines. But this still remains one of the stupider error messages as well as one of the best known.
Incidentally, I mentioned dummy keyboard plugs (for older machines) but does anyone know a current source for such? A couple of people have written to ask where they could order some and, frankly, I don't know the answer. If you do, please share that information and I'll pass it along.