USB keyboard issues

Here's one for you pros.

I am trying out a nice wireless USB keyboard/mouse product, all seems
to work well in legacy apps and windows. Keyboard works with any
legacy boot floppies I've tried. However, if I boot from a USB memory
stick, that is setup as a bootable stick, note the stick is actually
booting the same files as a win98se startup floppy, the USB keyboard
no longer works once the win98se (startup disk) is loaded from the USB
memory stick. The keyboard works when I see the startup floppy menu
(you know the one, 1. start computer with cdrom support 2. start
computer without cdrom support 3. view help file), but once I choose
an option and the boot process continues, config.sys and autoexec.bat
are processed, and the keyboard no longer works. Any thoughts?
Selecting any of the boot options kills the USB wireless keyboard.

BTW, a regular PS/2 keyboard works fine with the USB boot stick.

The only driver loaded by the system is himem.sys regardless of
options 1, 2 or 3 on the win98se startup floppy, so it looks like this
driver is somehow killing USB keyboard functionality provided by the
BIOS if, and only if, the files are loaded from a USB-HD memory stick
type device. If I boot from a standard floppy the USB keyboard works
w/o problem. This is a Biostar nforce2 mobo, but since there is no
suitable Biostar forum, I thought I'd pick the brains of the Asus
jocks.

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Best regards,
Kyle