An Accidental Stroke of Brilliance

Today, when I left my newly installed and configured HackBook (running XxX 10.5.6) downstairs for awhile, the display went to sleep. I thought nothing of it of course. I closed the lid and took it upstairs. When I opened the lid, it gave me the boot prompt. “Strange,” I thought, and when I pressed enter to boot it, nothing happened. My keyboard had stopped working. I rebooted and the keyboard still didn’t work. Rebooted again. Nothing. At this point I was cursing. Loudly.

I figured the only way to get it back was to reinstall it. I got the XxX 10.5.6 DVD, popped it in, and waited for the “press any key” prompt. I pressed the spacebar. The prompt was still there. My keyboard still wasn’t working. I started cursing again when the countdown on the prompt reached zero and booted my hard drive. Elation filled me. I was back in business.

As soon as I got to the desktop, I fired up System Preferences. I figured the problem was with my power-saver settings. I went to “Energy Saver”, clicked “Show Details”, and set everything to “Never”. Hopefully that’ll make it so it never happens again.

I rebooted without the DVD, reached the boot prompt and pressed enter. My keyboard was working again. Huzzah!

The lesson here? If this ever happens to you, pop in the DVD and let it boot for you.