Keyboard not powering up | USB not working

[meshaun]

Hi team, first post to the community!
Greetings to everybody from wonderful and sunny Sri Lanka..

I have my desktop PC, running windows 8.1 for quite sometime now and recently, came across a very unusual error.
I have my USB Keyboard, Logitec, and suddenly, the Keyboard doesn't power-up. Sometimes, the lights and keys work in the BIOS load up but then after Windows loading, the keyboard is not working (not lights working and no keys)

I sometimes changed the ports to check and for many times, this trick worked.
Very recently, even if I change the Ports for the Keyboard, it still would not power-up. Now, this is the same with USB drives too.
Even they do not work and are not recognized by the PC.

Is it a problem with Hardware (USB ports maybe? Running with Gigabyte G41) or is it bad Windows 8.1 setup?
The thing is, I've been working with the OS for quite sometime and now only this started to occur.

Everybody, please help me out.

[Geek-9pm]

That problem is not unique  to Windows 8.
The BIOS can find the keyboard even when Windows has lost it.

The BIOS should find the keyboard. If you can get into the BIOS setup, the keyboard was found.  You can power off and try another port and see if the BIOS finds it. If it can find the keyboard on any port, the issue is not the  USB hardware.

Does the mouse work in Windows? Use the mouse to bring on the on-screen keyboard and poke around in the device manager. Somehow Windows has lost the keyboard connection.

Can you try another keyboard? Not that the keyboard is bad,  but a different model will have a different  signature and windows will  become aware of a change.

Also repeatedly trying  other  ports can wake of the plug and play monitor.
This happens  over many versions of Windows.
I am not making this up. It is documented.
Windows 7 will not recognize USB devices. Have no keyboard
Please come back here and tell what you find. 

[meshaun]

Hi there Geek-9pm,
Thanks for the quick reply.

I tried the link you provided: "Windows 7 will not recognize USB devices. Have no keyboard "
Actually, this did the trick for now.
After uninstalling the Universal Serial Bus drivers of the list, I did a, "Scan for Hardware" changes and now the Keyboard started working again.

I wonder what that was but I believe that it's some drivers issue likely.
However, thank you  the quick fix.

Much appreciated.

[Geek-9pm]

Glad to hear you got it to work.
For further reference, here is some additional information for others to me come up with this problem. As I mentioned, the BIOS can detect the keyboard without the need for the Windows drivers. So the first step is to check to see if the keyboard is recognized in the the BIOS setup screen. That is a easy test to confirm the hardware is working and the problem is with the Windows drivers.because the mouse has a separate driver, the mouse should be working even when the keyboard does not.
Also, I forgot to mention the use of safe mode. The safe mode in Windows bypasses many of the custom drivers supplied by the manufacturers and uses generic drivers. So that would mean that the keyboard should work in safe mode. However, I have not been able to confirm this. Perhaps somebody else  found the answer to that.
And by the way, every Windows user should have in his emergency kit, a startup or recovery disk take care of these situations. The system repair should be able to fix this problem also. An actual physical DVD or CD is not needed because now Windows can be booted from a USB stick. That is documented elsewhere, and can be found on the Microsoft website.
In the worst case scenario if the user does not have access to another computer and cannot use either the keyboard or the mouse, he can try to boot. His computer from one of the life. Distributions of Linux. Using Linux. He could download diagnostic programs that are intended to fix Windows problems. Linux has utilities for partitioning of hard drive, so the user will have a new area of to reinstall the Windows operating system. In my opinion, installing Windows on a new partition is a better choice than wiping the disk and starting over again. Windows will tolerate having two versions of Windows on one hard drive. That can be used as a stepping stone to diagnose problems with the first installation of Windows. Of course, that is rather extreme; it not as extreme as wiping the whole disk. I hope this thread will be useful to other users who have lost use of keyboard and possibly the mouse. It does have happened.
Also, having a wireless mouse in your toolkit is a good idea.