| - I booted with init option (linux init=/bin/bash) in order to run no | init script and it didn't work either. I also tried D option (linux | D). Assuming that your mail is serious requires a fair amount of work, but I'll try anyway. bash man page reports that /etc/profile is read first. What do you have in it? I don't see how anything else could prevent your 'E' key from working.