David Gillon

So you may remember I've been complaining since March about my desktop machine not recognising the keyboard after Windows updates, requiring various intermittently successful USB driver shenanigans....

To which my eventual response was to stop Windows updates.

And where my working hypothesis was some sort of incipient USB hardware fault given it would eventually recognise keyboards if left there long enough. Though the fact it appears to affect keyboards and memory sticks, but not mice was just plain wierd. Affecting both front and rear USB ports, which are separate hardware, may indicate it's a motherboard issue (aargh!).

Anyway, the plan was no updates until Windows 11 appears (and maybe not even then).

But Windows found a way.

And so Wednesday night last week Windows started to updated overnight, but didn't finish the process.

When I found it turned off on Thursday morning I realised what had happened (I knew it was threatening to update, but thought I'd successfully rescheduled it for a week ahead), so I powered it up, logged in with mouse and onscreen keyboard, and left it to sort itself out.

Eight hours later it was still making no progress, so I power-cycled it as the only way of intervening with no keyboard to CTRL-ALT-DEL.

Which necessarily meant it did its didn't shut down properly routine, whereupon it decided it wasn't happy with the boot drive, and set about repairing that.

Next time I checked it was showing a Dell tools screen, and wanting me to select whether to invoke more Dell tools, or try rebooting again. And selecting between them with the keyboard, the one it doesn't recognise. More power recycling as the only option.

As of this morning it is recognising the keyboard again, but the two options I get on powering up are one) either the improper shut down spiel then into the Dell tools, or two) directly into the Dell tools, which are now demanding recovery media. I do have a recovery USB stick. But the USB doesn't seem to recognise it (or at least selecting that option doesn't do anything but refresh the screen, two of the other options appear to do the same rather than taking you to other pages and the last option is the firmware and I'm not going there). If left on its own it will power-off after five minutes

This is not good.

TLDR: USB has failed, Windows update has failed, boot drive may be borked, but who can tell? And fixing either problem may depend on fixing the other first.

My next step is to open it up and pull the drives to check them in an external enclosure, but I'm struggling with what to do beyond that. Suggestions, or sympathy, gratefully received.