It all started quite early in the morning when I was going to start converting useful mpeg clips for use at BCIT. I wanted to reduce them to a manageable size for use on the net storage drives on the institute's servers.First, I noticed that my DVD recorder drives weren't showing up under COMPUTER on Vista. Eventually, I decided this was because I had recently removed old Adeptec software from my computer. Originally, this was used for DVD or CD recordings years ago, but I had kept a part of those programs installed so that I could continue to use the labeling software only. After installing Win Vista Business I received a device driver error due to the ancient software that was affecting my DVD drives. I installed it.
Since I uninstalled the software, I hadn't notice that my drives were no longer functioning. So thankfully, when I noticed this morning, www.technet.com pointed out CODE 19 as a known problem. So, I tried editing the registry to remove the offending lines. Unfortunately, when trying to reboot, my PC wouldn't start.
The new-fangled Vista solution asked me to put my installation disk in my drives. Even after playing with the BIOS, I could not get the original Vista disk to boot. The only remaining option involved making a selection to install to a previously known working point.
It took me a long time to realize that because I have a wireless keyboard and mouse that I could not make a selection on the screen. Those devices only become available after Windows loads. That is the reason that I found it necessary to 'borrow' a work keyboard.
Whatever the consequences, I'm writing this on the home PC, so that says something about my ability to troubleshoot a computer problem ...