bad sector wrote:

It's a Durgod Taurus k-320 (made in China), and the reason I got it
was that ...
... I was up to here with num locks being ON by default so I wanted a
keyboard with NO numpad

Your BIOS might have settings for the default state of the keyboard on
boot. My BIOS (well, UEFI) has:

Bootup Num-Lock

Select whether Num Lock should be turned on or off when the system
boots up.

You should check if there is a similar setting in your BIOS. I went to:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards...IR_IV_FORMULA/

to see if an online copy of that mobo's manual was available, so I could
see if it mentioned a NumLock setting in the BIOS. Yep, that mobo's
BIOS has a NumLock setting, so you could configure the keyboard to have
its NumLock status either on or off on boot.

As I said it's a problem ONLY in the very early stages of boot, and

*I just realise now what that means*

..it's slow ONLY before the OS ignores the BIOS
and takes over, but then it's slow to the point of
sometimes being dead.

Got me confused. It's slow before the OS loads ("before the OS ignores
the BIOS") and it's slow when the OS loads ("then it's slow"). Up to
when the POST screen shows, the BIOS is in charge. It then locates the
boot sector in the active-marked partition on the drive, loads the
bootstrap code in that boot sector into memory, and passes control to
that bootstrap code (for the OS).

So, up to when the POST screen appears (and when the BIOS is in charge),
is the keyboard slow? Or is it after the POST screen disappears (when
the BIOS loads the OS' bootstrap code and passes control to it) when the
gamer keyboard gets slow?

durgod.com does list a driver for that gamer keyboard. Did you install
it? See https://www.durgod.com/Durgod-Zeus-Engine?_l=en. The manual
and software downloads are there. Seems they use the same ones for all
their keyboards.

Since it is a USB device, there is handshaking between the OS and the
device when the device sends its presentation data to the OS which
identifies the device's type. That presentation data gets stored in the
registry under the Enumeration key. If the enumeration data gets
corrupted, the OS doesn't know what is the device type. Cleaning out
the enumeration data and forcing a new copy to get stored in the
registry is easy for some but tricky to most. I've had to do it when a
USB device's enumeration data did not match on the USB device after its
firmware got updated. The enumeration data mismatch or corruption is
why some techs' canned response is to move the USB device to a different
USB port, but that won't delete the enumeration data for the original
port should you plug the device back into the prior USB port. No point
in getting into erasing the old enumeration data and getting new
presentation data stored in the registry if the keyboard is only slow
BEFORE the OS loads (i.e., after the POST screen disappears).

I bought it at amazon, thing is that living out in the sticks sending
anything back involves prohibitive shipping costs,

I usually ask the seller if they're willing to do a warranty exchange.
I buy a new unit, and they send that to me. When I get it, I reuse the
packaging to ship back the old defective unit. When they receive it,
they refund my purchase (the 2nd one for the same unit). I've even ran
across several companies that will include a pre-paid label you stick on
the return package, so you don't even have to pay for the return
shipping. The defective unit might still be usable, so a warranty
exchange lets me keep using the defective unit, I slide in the
replacement when it arrives, and I don't lose use of the unit except the
short time to make the switch.

the next one might be a Ps2, or I might try it with a generic Ps2
adapter?

A USB-to-PS/2 adapter is of no use unless the keyboard itself support
BOTH the USB and PS/2 hardware protocols. They keyboard will
automatically switch to match the hardware protocol of the port to which
you connect the keyboard. Make sure the next one actually says it
supports *both* USB and PS/2. The hardware protocol switch requires
active logic, not just passive rewiring within an adapter.

cheap USB-only keyboard: no problem.
gamer USB-only keyboard: problem exists.

Problem resolved. The gamer keyboard is farked.

Well, it _is_ a problem during early boot, the rest of the problem is
still waiting.

If slow up to the POST, and beyond into when the OS loads, then it
sounds like the gamer keyboard is defective. You can either suffer with
it (type on a turd), return for warranty replacement (or return for
refund if within the seller's refund policy period), or use something
else that works reliably. Your choice.

A search at amazon.com on "Durgod Taurus k-320" shows that keyboard can
be bought for $100. It's up to you if you want to invest another $20
USD to ship it back for a warranty return or refund, and hope the
problem isn't intrinsic to the design of that product which has you
afflicted with the same problem with the warranty replacement. That's
why I'd first check if the seller will do a refund, and then get
something else and cheaper. I do like mechanical keyboards, and they
are more expensive than the cheap rubber dome keyboards. However, if I
were to go to the expensive of a "gamer" mechanical keyboard, I'd get
one that connects to PS/2. That criteria excludes ALL of the Durgod
keyboards.

Personally I find the filtering at Amazon sucks, and why I rarely shop
there unless I already know exactly what I want and can search on that
string. You can't use it to narrow the search to what you want. "PC
gaming keyboard" is NOT the same as getting to a keyboard category and
then filtering by mechanical key. Hell, you can't even filter by USB,
USB-only, USB+PS/2, or PS/2. Best you can do at Amazon is start from
the top and use a search of "PS2 keyboard mechanical key color
gaming", and in the search results pick the Brand filter to match on
brands that I've heard of and perhaps have used before or based on
reviews that I've read before purchasing.