I'm experiencing a peculiar effect with a Microsoft wireless keyboard on my system which has a newly installed ASUS M Board (M4A88TD-M EVO), Processor (AMD Athlon II 4-core) and windows Vista ultimate 64.

The keyboard doesn't register key presses with the system when it returns form sleep mode. The wireless microsoft mouse operates OK.

BIOS power management is set to revive system from spacebar press. But it does not respond. Mouse movement does revive the system.

When the sign-in window for MS Vista appears, keyboard will not generate the characters to fill the field. I've worked around this by calling-up the virtual keyboard on the screen and using mouse-click to enter the appropriate values. That gets me to the desktop, but the phyiscal keyboard still refuses to work with the system up. It will only re-activate on hard re-boot.

I've checked the various boxes in the Windows power management and device folders to ensure that the boxes have been ticked for keyboard revival. All Ok.

All worked fine on the previous Asus board (AV8) and Athlon I dual core.

Any ideas ?

Re-install keyboard driver ?

Nick

Edited 1 December, 201015 yr by Clunkclick

Don't know what the issue could be -does the keyboard still show in the Control Panel when it comes awake? I wonder if it's because the wireless keyboards power themselves down to save batteries after a certain time, and it's losing it.

Phil

Is your keyboard USB or PS/2 ?

Some of my cheaper/older USB keyboards have this exact same issue.

Some of them respond to unplugging/plugging-in, some don't.

Enabling Legacy USB helps with some, not with others !

Tried all that. No joy.

Problem seems to be coincident with change of motherboard.

By changing some BIOS values I managed to get the keyboard to reactivate the system from sleep state, but it still went dead after windows loaded, so I couldn't get past the sign-on screen without using the virtual keyboard. When I looked in the device list I found that keyboard was loading intermittmently.

So I went to the Microsoft web site and downloaded and installed the latest keyboard driver. Still no change.

Then it started refusing to detect the keyboard after a cold start/boot - when booting, the system would respond to the keyboard whilst under control of the BIOS. As soon as Windows took control of the loading process, it either gave a "Could not detect the keyboard" error message or refused to let me sign-on at the start-up window.

So then I set all the BIOS values to default, and it booted without problem. So there must be an incpmpatibility between the BIOS and windows in respect of the keyboard software.

I'll try putting it to sleep and see what happens.

Nick

Edited 1 December, 201015 yr by Clunkclick

Have you tried updating your mobo drivers ?

Sounds like it could be problem with the drivers for the USB controller (as oppose to just the keyboard)

Have you tried moving the keyboard round different USB sockets, and what effect any other attached USB devices might have ?

Might be worth checking for updated BIOS software too.

Have you tried updating your mobo drivers ?

Sounds like it could be problem with the drivers for the USB controller (as oppose to just the keyboard)

Have you tried moving the keyboard round different USB sockets, and what effect any other attached USB devices might have ?

Might be worth checking for updated BIOS software too.

Sorry, I didn't make it clear. The Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse came as one package and operate off of the same tx/rx device which plugs, via a split termination on the Tx/Rx device cable, into separate PS2 connectors on the computer.

In fact, I didn't realise it, but the keyboard and mouse are so old that they both have a radio synchronisation button underneath each device ! So, knowing that I changed the batteries on both devices recently, in desperation, I pressed the re-sync button on both. This worked OK, producing a stable green light for both devices on the TX/Rx device. But again keybaord went dead at the Vista sign-on screen when coming out of sleep mode.

As you say, it might be worth re-loading the M board drivers.

Postscript

just upgraded the main chipset drivers, usb drivers and flashed the ROM - still no joy. intermittmently the system won't detect the keyboard from a cold boot. Mouse is OK. I'm wondering if the keyboard is going U/S.

But it seems to be fine under BIOS control. Weird.

Nick

Edited 1 December, 201015 yr by Clunkclick

Don't know what the issue could be -does the keyboard still show in the Control Panel when it comes awake? I wonder if it's because the wireless keyboards power themselves down to save batteries after a certain time, and it's losing it.

Phil

Power down issue ? Could be if the keyboard hardware is defective. In tests I'm booting the system to full readiness and then activating sleep mode through the keyboard and then immediately, within the space of 1 minute, waking it up again and with the elapse of I minute the keyboard ain't working. I suspect that its something switching in software.

Nick

My asus mobo used to do this and a bios update sorted it, but it's 7yr old.

I've seen something similar to this, when Windows didn't have a driver for the keyboard. Under BIOS it was fine, but when Windows the keyboard didn't work. I seem to recall it was related to the dongle which drove the mouse and keyboard not getting power because the ports didn't detect a device so shut the power off to the ports. I think that was the issue, but it was a few years ago now.

Phil

I've seen something similar to this, when Windows didn't have a driver for the keyboard. Under BIOS it was fine, but when Windows the keyboard didn't work. I seem to recall it was related to the dongle which drove the mouse and keyboard not getting power because the ports didn't detect a device so shut the power off to the ports. I think that was the issue, but it was a few years ago now.

Phil

That could be it.

The lead going from the TX/RX device back to the computer splits into two. One side (Keyboard) going into a PS2 connector and the other (Mouse) going into a USB connector. If anything's going to give trouble it will be the USB hub, if the device check box is ticked to allow the computer to turn it offf as a power management measure. However, I've examined all of the check boxes for USB hubs and they are all unticked. What i have noticed is that the keyboard device check-box in Windows Device Manager allowing the keyboard to wake-up the computer is unticked. So I've corrected that. I don't know whether that will actually provide extra functionality to the keyboard in Windows. At the moment I can wake the system from sleep mode using the keyboard, but. obviously at the point that it does this, the keyboard is still under the control of the BIOS

I re-boot and re-test..

Its really odd problem, because I had no problem with the previous and earlier vintage ASUS AV8 board that the new ASUS board replaced.

Postscript

I've gone through the process of setting-up the sleep mode (ACPI and APIC) settings in the BIOS of the new machine to replicate those on the old board (Asus have changed the defaults), as the keyboard worked on the old system. No joy.

I even turned off the AMD cool and quiet software in BIOS to see if that would make a difference. Again, No joy.

So I had a look at the differences in the hardware set-up for keyboard and mouse.

As said, the hardware leads that connect the TX/RX device to the computer come already hardwired into the device, as a PS2 connector for the keyboard and a USB one for the mouse.

On my previous motherboard (ASUS AV8) the computer connections were PS2 for both the keyboard and mouse and a USB to PS2 connector was supplied with the keyboard/mouse combo kit so that the mouse could be connected to the PS2 socket on the computer. When the original software was installed, which I think was XP compatible, it automatically looked for a PS2 connection for both devices.

On my current motherboard (M4A88TD-M EVO) there are sockets for a PS2 connection for the keyboard and a USB socket for the mouse.

However, the original software won't support a PS2/USB split and the more recent online software is either PS2 for both devices (Vers 7.1) or USB for both (Vers 8) and i've had the PS2 version installed to date. Nice one Microsoft, built-in redundancy.

So the next attempt at a solution will be to purchase a Female PS2 to male USB connector for the keyboard and then install vers 8 of the software.

At the moment with the Keyboard connected to a PS2 socket and the mouse connected to a USB socket, pressing any key on the keyboard will wake the system from S3 sleep mode (standby, screen-off, disk-off, CPU fan-off), establishes wireless communication between the keyboard and the TX/RX device (Green light on TX/RX device comes on), but the system doesn't respond to key depressions at the Windows log-in window. Warm-boot it again, and no problem. I guess a software pointer or a look-up table is destroyed when the system goes into sleep mode - it shouldn't be 'cause in S3 mode power is still maintained to the RAM memory. However, in going into S3 some of the CPU caches are flushed !

it could possibly be a PS2 bug in the BIOS ROM software because I've noticed that whenever I change any value in the BIOS, the first time I boot the system i get a "Keyboard not detected " error. Simply warm-booting the system again and the keyboard is detected.

Extended trial and error, then.

Double Postscript

Just out of interest, I disconnected the PS2 connection between the TX/TX device and the computer and found that the system could receive key depressions from the keyboard down the USB link only when addressing the Vista sign-on window. It did not mind sharing the link with the mouse. Hurrah !. So I uninstalled the vers 7 Intellitype software (PS2) and installed vers 8 (USB). All was still well.

However, there was a downside. Whilst BIOS ROM software would recognise the keyboard as a USB device it would no longer recognise it as capable of re-activating the system from sleep mode - the field for the Keyboard in the Power Management page of the BIOS just disappeared. This proposition was tested by putting the system to sleep and trying to wake it using the keyboard. No joy ! Whereas the mouse would still wake the system even though it wasn't formally detected by the BIOS ROM software !

Re-inserting the PS2 connector into the computer's PS2 socket (With the USB link being maintained) only suceeded in removing the keyboard from the Device list in Vista system device window.

Ideally i would like to wake the system from either the mouse or the keyboard. In this regard, I may try to reconnect the PS2 connector via a USB adapter to see if the PS2 signals will be filtered off onto the PS2 lead and as it is inserted in a separate USB slot, whether the system will regard it as a separate device and I will achieve full PS2 and USB functionality via 2 X USB ?

Final postscript

Sticking the keyboard PS2 connector into a PS2 to USB adapter, only succedded in reproducing the same eefcets as if the PS2 connector was connected to the PS2 socket on the back of the computer i. ethe BIOS would not recognise the keyboard.

So left as is i.e. keyboard and mouse communicating through the same USB connector with the effect that the BIOS only recognises the keyboard, Windows recognises both and both will wake the system from sleep mode.

Nick

Edited 10 December, 201015 yr by Clunkclick