Question Why my laptop's in-built keyboard is not working?

[humanbeaner]

Hello community:

I have a 7 year old Toshiba laptop (specs below) that originally came with Windows 7. I updated to Windows 10 Home about 3 years ago and all went well. Just about 2 weeks ago I boot my computer and suddenly the keyboard is not working. I shut down the computer by holding down the power button, turn it on again but this this time I enter the BIOS screen. In the BIOS the keyboard works perfectly, the arrow keys work, F1-F12 keys work, CAPS LOCK and NUM LOCK indicator lights turn on/off when pressed. I've tried all configurations in the BIOS to see if it solves the problem, including resetting the default configuration, but nothing works. As soon as the Windows 10 logo appears the keyboard stops responding. Interestingly enough, the CAPS LOCK indicator light turns on and it cannot be turned off when pressing. It goes off eventually and then the NUMS LOCK light does the same.

I've tried all standard procedures found in the internet, even mess with the registry. I've been able to solve other problems by following online tutorials, but not this time. Microsoft Tech Support remote accessed my laptop and did all sorts of troubleshooting but nothing worked. The keyboard drive in device manager is not detecting any problem, and it says the device is working correctly.

The problem, as I said, started 2 weeks ago and my Windows 10 Home version at the time was 1803. Windows never upgraded to version 1809. As part of trying to solve the problem, I did a complete clean install of Windows version 1903. The upgrade went well but the keyboard still doesn't work on Windows. A connected USB keyboard does work.

Please help. All the specs are here:

Toshiba Satellite P755D Laptop
Processor: AMD A8-3500M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics 1.50 GHz
System type: 64 bit operating system, x64 based processor
Pen and touch: No pen or touch input is available for this display
OS Edition: Windows 10 Home
OS version: 1903
OS installation date: 6/1/2019
OS build: 18362.145

Thanks.

UPDATE: - In my laptop's device manager, under Human Interface Devices, I have two listed devices which I don't know what they are. Both of them are called "HID-compliant consumer control device", both of them enabled and working. I only have an USB mouse attached to my laptop. A driver called Dynabook Hotkey Driver is also appears in the HID drives section. Is this a driver for the Function key?, why it appears in HID devices?

-After doing another clean install of the latest Windows 10, the only keys that work, or I should say, combination of keys that work, are Fn+F6(screen brightness down) and Fn+F7(screen brightness up).

 

[Grobe]

Seems definetively like a Windows-related problem.

However - just to be sure, try to boot the computer using a Linux live-cd (Mint, ubuntu, etc) and see if the keyboard works when the computer run something else than windows.

 

[humanbeaner]

Thanks Grobe, will try your recommendation and post back the result. Have a nice day.

 

[humanbeaner]

Seems definetively like a Windows-related problem.

However - just to be sure, try to boot the computer using a Linux live-cd (Mint, ubuntu, etc) and see if the keyboard works when the computer run something else than windows.

Hi Grobe, or any other user reading this. I tried an Ubuntu live-cd and the keyboard problem still holds. I'm not a frequent Linux user but somewhere around the Ubuntu settings I found that the keyboard status was 'sleep' or 'sleeping'. That does mean the laptop is somehow putting the keyboard to sleep? This made me curious, so I ended up reading about ACPI, since my computer is an "ACPI x64 based PC" and the ACPI apparently deals with the power management and maybe changing a setting there can solve the problem.

I also read here that turning acpi off in Ubuntu helped solve the trackpad boot options in another computer. Maybe my laptop's keyboard boot options are messed up? So UPDATE: My laptop's keyboard works in the BIOS screen but doesn't work once Windows or Ubuntu live-cd load.

 

[Grobe]

Ok, that is kind of bad because:
- It is not a Windows related problem.
- Haven't experienced any similar cases, so I don't know what may be the problem.

Do you have another keyboard laying around - and if yes, can you test to see if that keyboard work when connected to your laptop?