I have been having the same problem for hours

, & am happy to report that I found a way to get around having to get an adaptor for my USB keyboard

. I, too, was only able to hit DEL in the beginning of startup, but nothing registered from my keyboard after that (i.e. couldn't hit F8, select Safe Mode, etc.). I changed the BIOS setting for enabling USB devices, & found the info here:
http://www.smartcomputing.com/Editor...5w02.asp&guid=
Good luck!
