Keyboard and touchpad don't work

Community
1

A hardware question. This morning my laptop started up ok, but neither mouse nor keyboard work. So I shut it down the hard way, and started up again, no improvement.
I attached an external mouse, and that works. So I’m sure if I attach an external keyboard too, that would work as well (but I don’t have one atm to test it).

Not a very practical solution for a laptop though, can’t travel around with all that external stuff.

Anyone has an idea what the reason might be, and how to solve it?

I’ve googled around a bit, and found videos for replacing the keyboard, forum posts talking about checking KB/TP connections (where?), but in this case both stopped working at the same time, so it shouldn’t be a faulty keyboard/touchpad, and it would be just my bad luck if two connectors loosened up at the same time.

It’s a Samsung R530.

Thanks for any tips you can give me.

2

Have you tried starting your laptop in safe mode? If it works in safe mode but not in normal mode, maybe re-installing the drivers will help. And make sure that you anti-virus is up to date so you can run a check, just in case

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Yes I tried safe mode. No difference.
My antivirus is up-to-date, gonna run a check now just to be sure.

5

Try updating the drivers anyway. I doubt it is going to be that but this is easier that opening the laptop itself. It could be hardware failure but laptops are a pain to fix.

Also, check if you could restore its state to a date where it worked fine just in case that some update has messed up with the drivers or configuration.

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I’ll do that as soon as the scan is completed.

Ehm, how do I do that? It’s been years since a computer failed on me, I don’t remember. I’m running W7

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I agree with @molona, it looks like a drivers problem. I’ve had similar issue with touchpad on my laptop. And this has been fixed after reinstalling Windows

Read this: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/system-restore

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Ok I’ll definitely reinstall the drivers. The fact both of them stopped working at the same moment had me wondering.

Scan is at 5% after 1 hour, I’ll have to have some patience.

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11

Great. The antivirus found 3 infected files, got rid of them, asked to reboot, and during reboot the battery went dead (I didn’t notice the power was disconnected…).

Now all I get is a black screen :frowning:

13
Off Topic:

Perhaps your laptop is suggesting you need a holiday?

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I sure will need one once this is resolved. Right now startup repair is running.

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Ok it’s up&running again. Too bad this extra problem didn’t solve my keyboard/touchpad problems :wink:

Before I do anything else, I’m gonna backup my data. Looks like that’ll take an hour or two.

I’ll be back :smiley:

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18

So although I’ve never heard of this, but make sure there isn’t a keyboard combination/switch to deactivate the keyboard and touchpad. I know there is typically a function key combination to disable the touchpad (I’ve never heard of one to disable the keyboard).

Do you by chance use a docking station? Does the laptop still think it is docked?

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Never heard of that. Will have to check it.

Nope

I sure hope not :wink:

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What make and model number is the laptop?

Is there anything flagged up in Device Manager?

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Samsung R530

Yes I checked the driver status, and on both was the dreaded yellow triangle. Windows register messed up (that figures).
So I tried to reinstall them, no luck.

So now I’m doing a system restore from 4 days ago (most recent restore point available). I didn’t do anything spectacular in these 4 days anyway, so if it works I should be good. Keeping my fingers crossed.

And I backed up all my data :smiley:

24

Haha! We all knew that already! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Incredible. System restore failed because “impossible to access a file”. I disabled the antivirus and tried again. Still the same error :frowning:

Edit: it seems it didn’t remember I disabled the antivirus after reboot, maybe part of the system restore did work… :confused:

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Third restore failed as well, and this time the antivirus wasn’t active. I have no idea what else to do :frowning:

Edit: doing a restore from a system image :sweat:

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Restoring from a system image did the trick, fortunately. After almost eight hours, keyboard and touch pad are working again :sweat_smile:

Thanks to all for the help

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Until whatever patch/driver gets updated again :where is the taped mouth smiley?: