My keyboard won't work after Windows update.
How do I fix it?
Hi, everyone.
Leo, Notenboom.
Here for AskLeo.Com.
Let's get right into this question.
"A couple of weeks after getting a new
laptop, the manufacturer conducted an update, and now the keyboard won't work.
I've tried uninstalling the device and rolling back the update, but no luck."
This is actually I don't want to say it's
a common problem, but it is a frustrating one.
If you ever encounter it, there are several different things.
You can try to diagnose the problem,
and I'm going to run you through at least a few of them.
The first thing, and this is going to seem both frustratingly obvious.
And also, why would this even apply after an update?
Try another keyboard. Literally.
Go get yourself beg, borrow or steal a USB
keyboard, plug it in and see if that keyboard will work, if it will.
If nothing else, it makes some of the steps we're about to try a little easier.
It also tells you that it's very possible that what you're looking at is actually
not related to the update, but rather a coincidental hardware issue.
Your keyboard, the primary one that's not
working, has failed and potentially could need replacing or repair.
It's not guaranteed,
but it kind of stacks the deck in favor of it being a hardware issue
rather than being an update related software issue.
But even if it is software,
then we'll follow on with some of the steps we're about to take.
Let's move over to my Windows ten machine and kind of sort of simulate the problem.
My keyboard is working, but I'm not going to use it.
The first problem we're facing, of course,
is, well, how do I log in without a keyboard?
I mean, I have to type either a password or a pin.
Well, that's what this little icon down here is all about.
Ease of access that actually has the option for many different things.
The most important one that we're going
to play with right now, of course, is the onscreen keyboard.
This way, using the onscreen keyboard,
we're going to be able to type using only the mouse.
In my case, I will type my pin
and we're in.
So we were able to log into the machine
without needing the keyboard to work at all.
The first thing and you've mentioned this already are the drivers.
That's where suspicion usually goes.
If a specific piece of hardware fails after a software update,
I'm going to right click on the Start menu, click on Device Manager,
and there are a couple of different places to look.
It depends a lot on your specific machine,
but the one, of course, obvious place to start if it's listed is keyboards.
In my case, I've got a standard PS two keyboard on this virtual machine.
Right click on it and click on Uninstall Device.
That may sound kind of scary, especially for other devices.
Won't the device stop working?
Well, it's already not working. Right?
So we have nothing to lose.
The thing to do when you uninstall
the device is to then let that process complete.
Reboot. The process of rebooting should cause
Windows to load new drivers for any hardware devices it recognizes
for which it doesn't already have drivers installed.
And we've just uninstalled the keyboard driver.
So it'll reinstall the keyboard driver that used to be back in the day.
We call that plug and play, but it's basically Windows ability
to detect hardware and react to hardware changes.
Assuming that fails, you reboot and your keyboard is still not working.
The next thing I would actually try, even though theoretically it should be
redundant with what we've just done, is Update Driver.
Now, in this case, I'm going to go ahead and click Update Driver.
I'm not going to browse my computer.
I'm going to search automatically for drivers.
It will allow me to then also search for updated drivers on Windows update.
This is the scenario that I think probably has the most value in the sense that if
there's a later update, if there's something's that's been fixed
in the keyboard driver, you'll know that at least via Windows,
you'll be getting the latest and greatest driver.
So we'll go ahead and I'm going to close that.
I'm not actually going to do that here,
but that would be the next thing that I would try
with the driver out of the way and having
tried the driver, the next thing I would try is the Troubleshooter.
But once again, this requires us to be
able to type and we don't have a working keyboard.
Right click on the task bar, click on show the Touch keyboard button
that appears here in the notification area.
Click it. And all of a sudden you've got a keyboard.
Now I'm going to make that go away
for a moment and click the Start button and bring up the Settings app,
because that's where we want to do what we need to do next.
When you click on the keyboard button
to bring up the keyboard, you'll see that I'm still here and find
a setting, and I'm going to start typing by clicking
Fix Space keyboard.
And you can see it says Find and fix keyboard problems.
We'll click on that.
I can now go ahead and get rid
of the virtual keyboard and we can run the troubleshooter for the keyboard.
This may or may not find problems
with your keyboard if it does, great, if it doesn't.
Well, we're still back at square one.
We don't have a working keyboard.
The next thing that I would try in this one, I'm not going to run through here,
but on a different article, I do have video that walks through this
step called How I Fixed a failed Windows ten update.
You have the ability using the Windows Advanced Startup Options
to actually uninstall the most recent update.
I would do that I would uninstall whatever update it was you just got.
Be that a feature update,
the half yearly feature update, or a regular monthly security update.
Uninstall the last one.
See if that makes a difference.
If it does great, you know not to take that update right.
And you would then configure Windows Update to delay a while
for hopefully whatever problem it is to get resolved in Windows Update itself.
And again, that previous article I mentioned actually walks you through
the steps of making that change in the Windows Update settings.
But if rolling back the update doesn't
work, then we're still kind of stuck at this point.
Again, if you're certain that it's not a hardware problem,
you're absolutely convinced that the keyboard is physically functional.
Let's test that, shall we?
One of the ways to test that is to boot
from a different operating system or even a Windows setup disc.
When you boot from another disc, you are eliminating the use of all
the software that's installed on your machine.
Personally, I kind of like booting
from a Linux installation disc without doing an install.
I'm not saying install anything.
I'm saying just boot from the disc.
But you can do this with a Windows ten setup disc as well.
You can download those for free.
Once you boot up, you're going to be presented
with an interface, probably asking you something,
or at least giving you the opportunity to do something.
In Windows ten setup disks,
you can run the advanced options, go to a troubleshooter,
fire up a command prompt and command prompt is all about typing.
If typing works, you know the keyboard works.
It's a software problem.
If you go to Linux,
there are various Linux commands, various things that should allow you
to exercise your keyboard in some non destructive way.
Again, that will tell you whether or not the keyboard is working or not.
If when you boot into one of these other
discs or USBs, and the keyboard doesn't work, you've got a hardware problem.
I'm sorry that it happened,
coincidentally with an update, but there's a hardware problem,
and you need to diagnose that as a hardware problem.
If, on the other hand, the keyboard is working.
And yet when you boot into your own
regular Windows ten, it is still not working.
Even after everything we've done so far,
now we have to get a little bit more assertive in terms of fixing Windows.
There are three steps that I would try
in turn, to see if we can get it to work again.
These are three articles that I have
written with videos that will show you how to do them.
The first is five steps to repair Windows ten without losing programs.
This actually takes you through several
different steps that are worth trying, the most important one being using
the system file checker and a utility called DISM that will check the software
that's installed on your machine for certain forms of corruption.
And replacement, and a little attempt to repair them if it can.
If those work great you're done.
If your keyboard is still not working,
refreshing Windows ten without a reinstall or reset
this actually reloads the operating system again, as the name implies,
without resetting it, without reinstalling everything,
you may have to update settings or certain things that might get
overwritten by this, but this is essentially an inplace upgrade
that is intended to preserve everything about your windows to what you're used to.
It doesn't always, but it's intended to,
and it is the next most complete reinstall of Windows that I'm aware of.
This then presumably would reinstall the pieces associated with your keyboard.
Maybe it'll start working.
Hopefully it'll start working.
If it does, you're done and you can move on if it's still not working.
I know of only one more thing to try, and this one's painful.
Back up your machine,
reformat the hard disk and reinstall
Windows from scratch, and then all of your applications
from scratch, and then all of your data from scratch.
Hopefully, somewhere along this path, you'll be required to type and it'll work.
If it's not working, then I honestly don't know what's going on.
We've confirmed that the keyboard works
when you boot from different media, but now all of a sudden, it's not booting.
After you've tried to reinstall Windows
ten from scratch, there's something that's wrong.
I don't know what it is, but hopefully,
through all of these different steps, all of these different things,
we've tried to diagnose what's going on with your keyboard.
One of them, one of them, hopefully early on in the process,
will have tripped and will have gotten you a working keyboard that will then allow
you to move forward, knowing what to fix or avoid.
I hope that was helpful.
I hope that gives you some hope for being able to type again.
For updates for links related to this article.
For comments and more, visit askleo.com/136039.
I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is AskLeo.Com.