Keyboard Stopped Working-IBM R51 Laptop

[redman]

Hello All,
 My IBM R51 Laptop's keyboard stopped working.Everything ran fine prior to my shutting down the laptop. Upon restarting the laptop, the harddrive would not start.This was obvious fron the little lighted icon on the laptop. Also, instead of booting WinXP Pro, I got an error message stating that there was a "stuck key". I can boot WinXP by pressing the power button and then pressing F12 and choosing the Hard Drive. After doing this , the hard drive works fine. No problems with any programs. I tried System Restore but could not find a useable restore point. Even though the hard drive works, the keyboard does not. Nothing was done to preclude this failure. No liquids spilled and no drops off the table or anything like that.
   How likely is it for a keyboard to fail with no notice? Could there be some sort of corruption in the BIOS so it does not recognize the keyboard during POST? Would a Stuck Key error cause the Hard Drive not to boot?
   There is no warranty and I would just like to hear some views on the problem before I am forced to fork over $1oo for a new keyboard that I may not need!
                        Thanks for any help.

[GX1_Man]

IBM's were designed to alert you to major hardware failure at boot time. If you are getting no error messages go into BIOS (F1 at boot). Does your keyboard work there?

[redman]

Hi GX1_Man,

   Actually now that you mention it, I am able to use the up/down arrows and the function keys. So, I guess the keyboard is physically ok. As far as arrows and functions go!
Now i'm really stuck because it sounds as if this could be software related and that is something I need a lot of help with. Thanks for your thoughts on this problem.

[GX1_Man]

If you are game, I would suggest booting with a Linux CD and see if the machine is functional. You can check ALL of your keys. You'll soon know exactly where the problem is. Have a read here:

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1152393515