Keyboard Crashes

[JazzFlute]

Keyboard Crashes

Has anyone experienced issues with keyboards crashing on computers recently?

Over the past two weeks, a few machines (Windows 11 23H2 and 25H2) have had keyboards suddenly stop working completely. The Num Lock light doesn’t respond etc., and the keyboard becomes totally unresponsive.

However, as soon as the keyboard is plugged into a different USB port, it starts working again without any issues (apart from a couple of times)

 

Just checking if others have encountered something similar before I start investigating further.

[Jawloms]

On a specific model of PC? I had this a number of years ago with some computers I bought from Novatech where anything (IWBs, mouse, etc.) plugged in to a USB would stop working and plugging it in to a different port would then make it work again. Not OS specific. Plugging a powered USB hub in to the computer and then plugging the devices in to the hub sorted it for me, although of course there's an additional expense there.....

[JazzFlute]

6 minutes ago, Jawloms said:

On a specific model of PC? I had this a number of years ago with some computers I bought from Novatech where anything (IWBs, mouse, etc.) plugged in to a USB would stop working and plugging it in to a different port would then make it work again. Not OS specific. Plugging a powered USB hub in to the computer and then plugging the devices in to the hub sorted it for me, although of course there's an additional expense there.....

 

Yes all Stone/Converge PCs with 2 different ASUS Prime Motherboards.  probably going to have to look at logs etc. but was hoping someone else had an issue and fixed it before i start looking 😂

[ICTDirect_Joe]

There's a small chance it could be down to some sort of USB driver conflict? Worth a bit of investigating, maybe even uninstalling the driver and reinstalling a replacement one, and looking up what the drivers should be for the MOBO and seeing if they match on the PC.

[F56enthusiast]

Come to think of it yes, I've had a couple of cases of this on our Zoostorm AIOs which have Asus H610 motherboards in them.

[JazzFlute]

25 minutes ago, F56enthusiast said:

Come to think of it yes, I've had a couple of cases of this on our Zoostorm AIOs which have Asus H610 motherboards in them.

one of the same motherboards as me.  I'm wondering if Windows has updated one of the drivers

[DWilson1997]

We've had this issue recently, but only one stone micro PC's... they would work for 5 mins then stop! We reimaged and they started working again. 

[JazzFlute]

2 minutes ago, DWilson1997 said:

We've had this issue recently, but only one stone micro PC's... they would work for 5 mins then stop! We reimaged and they started working again. 

I got a feeling then that Windows probably updating it with a driver update that's not on your image and probably will download again in future.  Ill look further into it on Monday especially as i have all the same motherboards mainly across school

[ICTDirect_Joe]

3 minutes ago, DWilson1997 said:

We've had this issue recently, but only one stone micro PC's... they would work for 5 mins then stop! We reimaged and they started working again. 

The fact that reimaging worked makes me more confident that it could be down to a driver issue/mix up.

[JazzFlute]

first thin I'm gonna try before looking at drivers is do the below as Advised by Copilot (no need to laugh 😂)  May be a quick and easy fix  before looking at Drivers etc.

 

👍 Practical next step (high confidence fix direction)

Focus on:

1. Power / USB behaviour (MOST important)

• Disable:
  • USB selective suspend
  • “Allow computer to turn off this device”
• This alone fixes a lot of cases like yours

✅ Method 1 — Power Plan (main setting)

Steps:

1. Press Start → type Control Panel → open it

2. Go to:

   Hardware and Sound → Power Options
   

3. Click:

   Change plan settings
   

   (for your active plan)

4. Click:

   Change advanced power settings
   

5. In the list, expand:

   USB settings
      → USB selective suspend setting
   

6. Set:

   • Plugged in: Disabled
   • (and On battery: Disabled if laptops)

7. Click Apply → OK

 

 

Other Methods also below advised after doing Method 1

 

✅ Method 2 — Device Manager (VERY important as well)

Do this too — it often matters more than the above.

Steps:

1. Right-click Start → Device Manager

2. Expand:

   Universal Serial Bus controllers
   

3. For each of these (you’ll have several):

   • USB Root Hub
   • Generic USB Hub
   • USB Hub (USB 3.0 / USB 3.1 / USB 3.2)

👉 For each one:

1. Right-click → Properties
2. Go to Power Management tab
3. Untick:

   Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power
   

4. Click OK

---

✅ Method 3 — (Optional but good) Registry / GPO style enforcement

If you want to force it across multiple machines:

Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USB

Look for or create:

DisableSelectiveSuspend (DWORD) = 1

🔹 Then reboot

---

🔁 After making changes

• Reboot the PC
• Test again (ideally reproduce the issue)

---

🧠 Why this matters (in your case)

Selective suspend allows Windows to:

• Put USB ports into low-power mode
• Sometimes fail to wake them properly

This can cause:

• Dead keyboard (no lights ✅)
• Port stops responding ✅
• Works instantly in another port ✅

👉 Exactly matches your symptoms.

---

✅ What success looks like

After disabling:

• Keyboard should never completely die
• You might still see minor glitches, but not full port lockups

 

Edited June 12 by JazzFlute

[BKGarry]

I have had some fun issues with drivers recently, wasn't USB, but some hardware identifiers are similar/the same and SCCM/ConfigMgr was pushing similar drivers which caused issues. Actually ended up taking out a lot of drivers and got a windows update powershell command to download them after the install of applications. This is what I had with weird behaviour coursed by an ELAN SM Driver that was putting itself in over the Intel one

[psydii]

Yup Ausus motherboards in most cases too. A couple of instances where they keyboard was connected via a old anker usb/etherenet combo dongle. Though if left for a few minutes they recover without intervention.  We first noticed it happening yesterday after June's update started rolling out.  Nothing actually on the service desk about it, but I've been hopping over lots of machines ahead of next weeks' secure boot cert expirery so I've had much more opportunity than usual to be touching machines that are coming out of sleep/hardware detection states.

[BKGarry]

now IIRC correctly Reliability Monitor ("Perfmon /rel" in the run box) may show some weird driver issues if it gets logged as a windows issue but if it happens after sleep it may be the power settings allow the USB ports to sleep

[mikes]

We just had this today, had a teacher phone up her keyboard/mouse stopped working on a desktop I have set up in her office. Then at around 12pm I had calls from a few classrooms   their input (both keyboard and mouse) have stopped working, no LED's on the keyboards responding but the mice were lit up.

Changing USB ports didn't fix it.  When I rebooted, I could log on then 5 mins later the USB input would stop.

So I wonder if this is some new Windows issue?   Haven't updated in a week so can't see it being that. This is on 25H2

[JazzFlute]

9 minutes ago, mikes said:

We just had this today, had a teacher phone up her keyboard/mouse stopped working on a desktop I have set up in her office. Then at around 12pm I had calls from a few classrooms   their input (both keyboard and mouse) have stopped working, no LED's on the keyboards responding but the mice were lit up.

Changing USB ports didn't fix it.  When I rebooted, I could log on then 5 mins later the USB input would stop.

So I wonder if this is some new Windows issue?   Haven't updated in a week so can't see it being that. This is on 25H2

Yes, it's escalating now and is occurring on both 23H2 and 25H2 PCs, so I definitely think a Windows update has caused it. It has happened on two different PCs today.

 

In some cases, the keyboard and mouse start respond again when I unplug them and reconnect them to a different USB port, but other times this does not work.

The two methods I listed previously have not resolved the issue so need to look into it further.

 

Are your PC's Asus Prime motherboards like mine?

[psydii]

...just a thought. There have been a lot of driver and firmware updates over the last couple of months.. perhaps its related?

I've  not seen USB peripherals fail to recover after a reboot/disconnect/reconnect, but transient issues are definately up a bit this month.   We have also had distinctly more wifi issues than normal. Devices seem less enthusiastic to connect, and less reliably detecting internet connectivity, sometime even failing to see the DCs even though everythign shows as connected.  In a couple of extreme cases we've had devices losing the wireless cards completely, reporting USB errors and generally being janky until (another) bios update was applied and then they returned to working flawlessly again (so far).

[JazzFlute]

14 minutes ago, psydii said:

...just a thought. There have been a lot of driver and firmware updates over the last couple of months.. perhaps its related?

I've  not seen USB peripherals fail to recover after a reboot/disconnect/reconnect, but transient issues are definately up a bit this month.   We have also had distinctly more wifi issues than normal. Devices seem less enthusiastic to connect, and less reliably detecting internet connectivity, sometime even failing to see the DCs even though everythign shows as connected.  In a couple of extreme cases we've had devices losing the wireless cards completely, reporting USB errors and generally being janky until (another) bios update was applied and then they returned to working flawlessly again (so far).

I get the feeling it's related to power management, ECO, or sleep settings, where the USB devices are being put to sleep and then failing to wake up properly.

 

I'll have more time tomorrow to go through the logs and investigate further. At the moment, I can only see the issue becoming more widespread, and a number of users are already becoming frustrated with it, which is completely understandable.

 

Until i find the problem I'm going to blame it on Ed Miliband and his Net Zero Policy until i figure it out 🤣

Edited June 18 by JazzFlute

[ICTDirect_Joe]

Looks like its time to bring back the PS/2 port

[BKGarry]

14 minutes ago, ICTDirect_Joe said:

Looks like its time to bring back the PS/2 port

PS/2 is actually quite sort after in gaming motherboards now. As PS/2 works through interrupts rather than polling so in theory is more responsive