I had a recent client contact me with a pc issue. The keyboard and mouse stopped working on a recently updated Windows 10 pc. The pc was a Dell All In One pc with a wired keyboard and mouse.

The client was using the pc normally when seemingly the usb devices lost power. The lights on the keyboard and mouse both went dark. A removal and reconnection did not fix the problem.

In order to get the devices working again I tried to boot to safe mode without success. I then tried a system restore to several days prior to the problem. The system restore ran for over an hour and displayed and error restoring, then a successfull restore message popup However both the keyboard and mouse were working again.

Upon investigation I noticed in the Windows Device Manager that both the keyboard and mouse were listed as unknown devices. Looking at the properties of the devices the drivers were not installed and attempting to update the drives also failed. Removal of the devices and rescanning also did not bring the devices back correctly.

At this point I installed Logmein so I could connect remotely if the problem came back.

I attempted a Windows update to bring the pc back up to current. I noticed that  KB4074588 (A cummulative update to Windows 10 1709) failed but was listed in the updates that the pc installed correctly. After a few mins the same issue reoccurred. I lost the keyboard and mouse locally again.


The Solution

As I now had remote access to the pc, I tracked the issue down to the windows update that failed to install correctly. To resolve the issue I manually removed Windows update KB4074588. As soon as as that update was removed the keyboard and mouse started responding again. I manually downloaded the correct version the update from the Microsoft Update Catalog and reinstalled it (see screen shot below). It did install successfully this time. After several reboots and hours of testing the problem did not return.

kb4074588

I cannot guarantee that this will work for everyone but itfixed it for me.

Hope this helps someone else. Please leave comments if you found other solutions.

For other “It Fixed It For Me” articles click here