Weird problem. One specific keyboard has stopped working with one specific laptop. Looking for ideas.

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cbf123

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Dec 12, 2013
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I've been using my Kinesis Freestyle Pro for over a year with an HP ZBook 15 G4, and yesterday it suddenly stopped working. When I plug it in, the lights at the top (above the layout/macro/remap/smartset keys) blink briefly and then turn off. (Normally the leftmost light above "layout" stays lit.) None of the keys do anything, the keyboard doesn't show up in Device Manager under "keyboards" when I plug it in, it seems dead.

Here's the weird part. On the same laptop the keyboard works fine when I'm in the UEFI BIOS, and it works fine on another Windows 10 Pro laptop (HP ZBook 17) and a Windows 11 desktop. And other keyboards work fine with this laptop. But something is causing this specific keyboard to act strangely on this specific laptop. Any ideas?

I've unplugged it and plugged it back in, I've removed all the keyboard entries from Device Manager to have them get auto-detected and added back in, I've rebooted the laptop, I've run the keyboard troubleshooter in Windows, I've verified that my "input method" is set to "English US Keyboard", but nothing changed the behaviour.
 
Sounds like a USB Power issue IMO, especially since it works in the BIOS, before any advanced keyboard features would be enabled. By chance, have you tried running the keyboard through a powered USB hub? In this scenario, the keyboard would be powered completely by the USB hub, but would only be sending data to the laptop USB port. It might be worth it to try just for diagnostic purposes.
 
I had a weird USB problem as well a few weeks back...

Old P67 mobo, USB 2.0 out to Samsung CRG9 monitor, keyb/mouse fed from that.
Then one day no keyb/mouse. Machine had been left on, only the monitor was mains disconnected overnight.

Found it works great if the CRG9 is connected via (the only) USB3.2 on the mobo, but none of the 11x USB 2.0 ports work with it now.
Yet those USB 2.0 ports work fine with mouse/keyboard connected directly.
Weird, Grrrr.



Op,
If you have an external USB hard drive, use it to boot another Windows installation and see if the keyboard then works ok.
If so, you know its just an OS problem.
 
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