Keyboard/Mouse not working in uefi

Keyboard also does not work starting up (like trying to press delete to enter uefi)

Edited by sohleks - 27 Dec 2017 at 1:20pm

sohleks wrote: (I'm sorry this is long...) Keyboard also does not work starting up (like trying to press delete to enter uefi) But once windows 10 gets going they work. And odd thing is it was fine in uefi just the other day. And I made no changes since then (but I was messing with things prior) I didn't realize why uefi wouldn't start until I used the asrock restart to uefi app to get me there. When I got there mouse/keyboard was not functional. So I tried different usb sockets 2.0s 3.0s; I also went and grabbed a different mouse. These are all very basic 15$ mouse keyboards (optical mice). I don't have another keyboard atm My intel system uses an asrock H97M pro4. I put it together nearly 2 years ago. My windows 10 install is pretty fresh, as I reinstalled it about a week ago after formatting my drive. And before that I flashed my asrock to the latest bios 2.1 (was on 2.0 before). I did this because I upgraded my windows 8.1 to 10. But after a week that got messed up. So I did a clean install. And felt like totally updating. I think it's possible I did something screwy in my uefi options. But I swear it was working fine til today. That's just the beginning. I like to tinker with my stuff a lot. And sometimes I mess things up. Temporarily. Nothing permanently so far. So one night I got bored, and intrigued, to try and setup my desktop for remote access so I could mess with my computer over the internet going out of town over the holidays. So that was an adventure in itself. Then I borrow my brother's laptop to be a test remote. But I go oh, maybe I should do a virus scan on this thing and some minor optimization first before connecting to my computer with it. I've neglected proper maintenance on my family's computers. TBH. His laptop (windows 7 btw) had windows updates clogged up and failing. I was downloading avast though windows defender itself (I installed windows defender myself a long time ago. On 7 it is not built into the OS. I recently became more paranoid and use 3rd party stuff and normally operate in user mode on my main rig)... it claimed to reveal a trojan when I opened it. It said it was there since the 15th which was about a week ago at the time. Avast said windows needed desperate updates to protect from the wanna.cry exploit. Makes sense since I saw a ton of failed updates in the update log. I tried to have the AV remove the threat and restart. I was reacting. When his laptop rebooted his touchpad and keyboard was not working in the windows 7 login screen. I actually tried my cheap basic usb keyboard mouse on it. The keyboard did not work but the mouse did even after switching slots. I couldn't get past login without typing a PW so I tried the onscreen keyboard. Which refused to load fishily. Just perma-circle load. I don't know why I was trying to do this in retrospect. I had been considering doing a fresh install on his laptop too. I wanted to get everyone's pc up to date and secure and running smoothly. And at this point there's no question it's for the best. Oddly though his laptop's touchpad/keyboard was working in its uefi and in a linux ubuntu usb boot which I have not plugged into my desktop since. So I formatted his computer's harddrive in linux. And I had another usb with the official windows iso in it to install with. His laptop has a bios update but HP's stuff isn't working properly so I thought to worry about it later and get the laptop working. And. Well. When I reinstalled my own system the other week I was messing around on linux (on the same bootable usb) for the first time (I was trying to recover data from when the windows 10 upgrade pooped itself. didn't work easily and it wasn't important) I formatted my harddrive to the gpt partition style instead of master boot record which I believe my system was on before (because of the 4 true partition limit I bumped into). And I got my machine running well on it so I felt to try the same on his even tho it's older hardware that might not like it (runs on a uefi too). And I thought if it didn't work I'd try it the old way. His laptop wouldn't see the usb with windows installer on it (it's the legit windows iso made from microsoft's media creation tool). So I wanted to know if my pc would boot to it (this might've been the mistake). And that's when I tried to get into my uefi today to switch the boot order. So umm. I'd say it's pretty likely I messed something up. I might have screwed with some setting. Or underestimated a very nasty infection that somehow was still on there in his uefi which seemed to work properly before. Maybe tho I'm paranoid and this was caused by my own stupidity. What should I do here if I'm having problems interfacing with the uefi. Rather not ignore it.

So you booted multiple, different OSs, among many other things you described in your long post.

Just sayin', if you're lost after doing all of that yourself, imagine someone trying to determine what happened by reading a description of it that may not include everything that happened.

The "settings" you played with are in the UEFI, or in the two OSs you booted from with the H97M Pro4 board, or both?

Regardless, did you try the Fast Boot option set to the Ultra Fast setting in the UEFI? If you did, it is normal to not be able to enter the UEFI via the keyboard with that configuration. Only the Restart to UEFI feature will get you into the UEFI in that situation.

To stop that from happening if that is the case, or hopefully just clear up the problem with the mouse and keyboard from "messing" with things, try clearing the UEFI/BIOS with the jumper on the board. I imagine you know how to do that.

Also, while you are clearing the UEFI with the jumper, remove the boards battery for 10 minutes. That will clear all of the UEFI's memory. You'll need to reset the clock and date after removing the battery.

An infection that only caused the USB ports to not work during POST would be a strange thing, but infecting the UEFI chip itself in general would be impressive IMO. Or perhaps the UEFI was corrupted. So flashing the UEFI again with the latest version 2.10 might be worth doing. Please use the Instant Flash update method, it's the most reliable. Of course if you cannot use the mouse or keyboard in the UEFI UI, you can't use Instant Flash.

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H97M%20Pro4/#BIOS

Since the USB ports work after the OS boots, the source chips are not dead. So it should be either a bad or confused configuration. Clearing the UEFI with the jumper and removing the battery for a full clear is all you can do with it, short of flashing the UEFI again in case of corruption.