David Gillon

I had a little trouble logging in yesterday, Windows didn't seem to be recognising the keyboard, so I got in using the on-screen keyboard. It seemed to be working once I was in, but not completely reliably, so I decided to run Dell Update, which informed me there were a couple of critical driver updates. So I downloaded those and left it to reboot overnight.

This morning, same problem. Only when I get in, I have absolutely no keyboard response whatsoever. So I haul out the stash of old keyboards and all of those get the same response - they're not being recognised by the USB. I check drivers etc, no updates needed.

Bugger. Using the on-screen keyboard on a non-touchscreen monitor is a pain in the backside.

Late afternoon I have a brainwave. I have a wireless keyboard, and that probably has a different driver. So I dig that out and plug it in. It's immediately recognised, yay!

I go to type, nothing. I change the batteries, nothing. Download the manual and check the connection sequence, nothing. Try it on the laptop, recognised, but nothing. So maybe that has a problem of its own.

But it started me thinking about USBs, and wondering if it might be a USB problem rather than a keyboard problem, and I have a second set of USB ports on the back of the desktop.

So I crawl under the desk and plug a keyboard in. "New device recognised: USB keyboard" and it works first time.

And then I remember. The reason I changed from plugging the keyboard in at the back, to plugging it in at the front, was I had precisely this scenario, but with the back USB ports, a year or so ago.

Computers are weird.