Or why I will never be without work as long as there is Windows.
A client called me to say that their computer would not boot. From their description it was stuck on the ‘Windows Recovery Screen’, which could have been anything, so I went in to investigate.
This screen usually appears because the machine has not been shut down properly, but could be due to any reason that has caused Windows not to boot. The first symptom was that I could not select any of the recovery options, in fact the keyboard appeared to be dead. After repeated un-plugging, re-plugging and trying different USB ports without success I declared it dead, swapped it for another one and the machine then booted normally. Hooray!
I have seen Windows machines hang at various points due to a dead keyboard, usually with either a BIOS error or the Windows Recovery Screen. These are NOT user friendly.
When a Mac keyboard fails, you get a pretty icon of a keyboard on the screen and a message telling you that it could not find a keyboard and could you connect one. While some users may not be able to fix this problem at least everyone (should) know what the issue is.
Windows – built by Geeks, for Geeks.