mystery X lossage

[Rob Mayoff]

| Yet, I now find myself in a situation where the first time X starts up
| after booting, it doesn't see the keyboard at all.

It would be incredibly disrespectful for a lowly peon such as myself to
inquire whether such a lofty artisan as you has checked the X server
output for suspicious messages.  Have you?

I used to see something like that, when I was running Windows NT on
a Thinkpad 770. Sometimes it would get to the login prompt and the
keyboard (and maybe the trackpoint too, I don't recall) would not work.
I found that being very careful to touch neither the keyboard nor the
trackpoint until the login prompt appeared would avoid the problem.