Two very stupid things happened on Wednesday night.

Firstly, I had to get a Word report off the old PC, as the document was needed for work. I disconnected the new PC from the monitor, and from the gizmo that the wireless Microsoft keyboard and mouse use. I haven’t connected the printer and scanner to the new PC yet, and it only took a couple of seconds.

So, OK. Straightforward stuff. What more could you ask for?

Next, I connected the old PC to the power cable, and plugged in the USB wireless gizmo for the keyboard and mouse. The old PC runs Windows XP Home - no Linux. But, given the experience I had installing Kubuntu Linux a couple of weeks back, I was certain I’d have to make sure that both keyboard and mouse were set up as USB items in the BIOS. Then the OS’d be fine! I powered up, hit the delete key to get into the BIOS, and started hunting around for the USB options.

Just then, my wife came into the room and asked what I was doing. I explained that I needed to set the USB options in the BIOS to enable the keyboard and mouse. She looked at me strangely. “No, you don’t”, she said. “But I have to”, I explained. “I needed to do that for Linux, so I’ll need to do it here”. “OK… But how are you moving the cursor around in the BIOS?” she asked.

Stupid thing number one: me.

OK, so the wireless gear works fine when moving around in the BIOS menus. Brilliant stuff - Windows XP boots up!

Uh-oh. Guess what? Kubuntu Linux works beautifully with a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse. Microsoft Windows XP doesn’t, without installing the Microsoft drivers. Ever tried installing drivers without a working keyboard or mouse?

So… can you guess what stupid thing number two is? Can you say “irony”, folks?

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