I have an Acer Aspire 5553 running Windows 7
I have tried all these:

Ubuntu 14.04 both 32 bit and 64 bit
Ubuntu 12.04.03
Xubuntu 14.04
and Linux Mint 17 Cinammon

and unable to use my internal keyboard.

Only because Ubuntu 14.04 has onscreen keyboard could I continue the installation but I tried all the others on a pen drive.

I am not sure what to do next or abandon thoughts of Linux. My BIOS has no setting for keyboard. I cannot update drivers as this is only done via windows updates so already done.

I have tried the setting the keyboard to English UK which is what I want.

I have tried the language support setting keyboard input to INBUS and then NONE and neither worked.

It is pointless I think trying a USB keyboard because it is not practical for me to use with a laptop.

I might add I succesfully installed first time Ubuntu on my older Acer laptop

Any help appreciated.

I have just found a similar problem to mine and they got it working by updating the BIOS from Acer, so will have a go at the next.

actually if you read about the update it is for microsoft not linux. You may want to go into bios set to none OS or no plugin play. this will let bios run the hardware. Then linux will try to read the irq set up by bios. remember most of these bios are built to run windows on acer machines. and windows trys to run bios. so 99 percent of all updates for bios are for microsoft. trust me upgrading bios on an acer machine well lets say good luck.

I am one that rarely updates bios. I had 99.9 percent great luck with it. but that .01 has caused me serious money in the past.

As for many of the major motherboard manufactures that are actually designed to do this with backup redundancy I have had no issues. but on an old amd64 acer nope
never again. pulled the board put a asus in there made the power feeds work.

Thanks but the BIOS settings on my Acer are very basic and do not include those options you mention, basically just machine info and boot order settings.

Does the keyboard work in the very first part of boot/grub?

Does the numlock work when this has booted?

I've seen a similar thing a long time ago where it was a timing issue. I think that when a key was pressed too soon it caused a race condition.

gotta be something you can get to... afterall, someone else has the same laptop and installed a distro of linux.

http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=67248

googling: Aspire 5553 linux

shows that a number of people have other issues, but otherwise indicate they were at least able to type in commands or something (not indicating using external keyboard either).

Thanks for your replies.

The keyboard has never worked at any stage of the installation or when installed (but was able to access the on screen keyboard from the start of installation).

I have since tried Linux Mint Debian with same result.

I did try adding acpi=off to the boot menu and that did work in as much as letting me use the internal keyboard to log in to Ubuntu - but when I logged in the icons disappeared and the screen froze - the mouse movements were jerky too.

Most people now say to update the BIOS as a few people achieved success this way - but I am a bit cautious about doing that.

Try an older Knoppix live cd/dvd 3.4 to 5.5 and see if it works.