[ubuntu-za] No keyboard detected

[Jan Greeff]

An interesting thing happened.

I had two hard drives in my desktop, one an SSD loaded with my daily-use 
Ubuntu 14.04 and the other with Zorin, which I was preparing for a friend.

Initially everything worked fine, I could select which drive to boot 
from in the grub menu. Then suddenly, the system did not pick up the 
keyboard, connected via USB, so I was unable to access BIOS or to select 
any options in the grub menu. Once the system had booted, the keyboard 
worked fine.

While Googling around for solutions, I found a suggestion that led me to 
try connecting the USB keyboard to the little round plug (sorry I dont 
know the terminology) via an adapter. Problem solved!

Can anybody please explain the mechanics of this hiccup and how I can 
get this keyboard to function properly via USB once more?

Many thanks,

Jan