bonestonne

InWin H-Frame ITX case with 180W PSU Gigabyte Z97N-Wifi Intel Core i3 4130 4gb DDR3 80GB SSD Slim DVD+/-RW The wifi antenna has been changed to one that doesn't stick out of the case, because the system does travel a bit. Runs the SteamOS, I've taken over root access and have also added XBMC to the machine for streaming. Unfortunately, a lot of plugins have really poor support now. Dual Xeon rig is still my desktop, this is for gaming and HTPC usage only.

If you have PS/2 port on the motherboard, that is the absolute easiest way to get around a driver issue like you're having. It will work in every OS with no driver issues whatsoever. Plenty of optical PS/2 mice are available from a multitude of vendors.

If you're watching true HD videos, you are definitely reaching the limits of your AGP card. I would not call them extremely capable, and the cards will be good for "basic use" and not a whole lot beyond that. Considering how old the card has to be by now, I'm not really surprised that you're having trouble with it. Onboard video from the same era will pretty much perform the same, so you aren't going to really see an improvement for HD videos, and the cards getting hot because you're really pushing it's capabilities. A really high end AGP card would be okay with HD playback, but you'd have to look at newer hardware to really get better playback. LGA775 systems with either integrated graphics, or a PCI-e x16 card, and you'll get the performance you're looking for (and more).

Pull the floppy out, pull the HDD out. Also try swapping the RAM if you can (or pulling it and seeing if it changes behaviors). Used to have a 560 myself, never got anything like that out of it.

In the BIOS/EFI menu, you'll have to disable a feature called "Quiet Boot" or something along those lines. Secure Boot should never have really been included, that's a bigger problem with the PC market today, you could disable it, however all it would do is allow you to boot off of external devices much more easily (as well as boot media that does not have EFI compatibility). Sometimes this option is under a listing called "CSM." Quiet Boot is not available on all machines, as when an OEM manufacturer makes the BIOS for Lenovo (or any other name brand), there are requirements, and options that are "hidden" or permanently inaccessible by the end user. With something like that, it may be possible to look into a BIOS modding community, which could potentially add the features you're looking for, but this would depend on the motherboard itself supporting those features. Quiet Boot would likely just be hidden, but you'll have to dig around to see if it's in there.

I saw something like this happen before in an Acer. Ended up replacing the motherboard because literally nothing I did was working. I ended up hanging onto the mobo just in case, and when I went back to it, several months later, it was just working. I would leave the machine unplugged and without power for a few days and see what happens. As Punto mentioned, check all USB ports for damage. I had a computer in recently that wouldn't boot with upgraded RAM because a USB port was broken and shorted. I suspect you may have a problem in there that you just don't notice yet.