When I install the free Beos Personal Ed 5 -it shows the splash screen with the icons -but no mouse (serial) and the keyboard can't be used This occurs on a 75Mhz Pentium with 32Mb Ram - running Windows 98SE on one partition. The hard drive is 1.5Gb with no applications on top of Win98. On my 133Cyrix machine 4Gb harddrive running 98 and with linux on its own partition there is only a grey screen when I try it. On a machine at my TAFE (educational institution) Pentium4 - the splashscreen appears - but no mouse or keyboard. I have tried using the spacebar as it is booting but it ignores this. I have an assignment to do on an operating system in 2 weeks (BEOs) and am wondering what to do as it is too late to start collecting other material. I want to use the 75Mhz machine as it seems simplest Thanks for any suggestions

I agree, start on the Pentium. List of ideas to try. Use a PS/2 mouse. Boot with a beos boot floppy. Also with the bootfloppy try pressing the spacebar when you see "loading..." If the keyboard is working then you should see a safe mode screen. Choose the safe modes and work farther. Disable plug and play. (acutally the first choice) Some older PIO mode CD's do what you have. You might have to change CD settings or disable CD or disconnect. Disable USB support if you have it. Check Frizbe.net for hardware ideas. Ask also on begroovy and osnews and check Betips.net for tips. Cyrix may or may not work and some P4's need a boot disk made from a P4 patched system. Others just need the safe mode "don't call bios" to work.