Calling all cars

"phenotyp" (phenotyp) 06/10/2014 at 21:45 • Filed to: IT gurus

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Some beetles in Oaxaca, Mexico, for your time. Computer BS inside.

So, today I've had two of my three Microsoft Arc keyboards stop responding. The first one was this morning. It was the newest one (bought 2 months ago almost to the day). Brought the two from work home with me, to test some more, and see if I could figure out what's what. All have been swapped to different USBs on three different computers, new batteries, and now the oldest one (on my home desktop) has also stopped responding. I figured, one, hey, no big whoop, just a faulty thing. But then to have the oldest one ALSO stop responding, on any machine... This seems improbable at best.

WTF is going on? How do I stop/fix it? I'm honestly at a loss, at this point.

itschrome > phenotyp 06/10/2014 at 22:14

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wait so you have three wireless keyboards and all are not working? do you have three different receivers? or are you just using the one with all three?

deekster_caddy > phenotyp 06/10/2014 at 22:19

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what else is new in your home? I'd be looking for a source of interference. The way a 2.4 GHz cordless phone could cut off an 802.11b wireless signal...

phenotyp > itschrome 06/10/2014 at 22:26

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Three separate keyboards, three separate computers. Two desktops, one tablet. One desktop at home, one at work, tablet travels. This seems to be the fail point. The first failure was this morning, the tablet's keyboard wouldn't respond, so I swapped it to the desktop, and still nothing. Then the same thing happened at home tonight, the oldest of the three keyboards stopped responding when I was swapping what had been the tablet's keyboard (the first to fail) with the home desktop's (which then also failed).

The desktops are both Win7, the tablet is ancient and XPSP2.

phenotyp > deekster_caddy 06/10/2014 at 22:27

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Three separate keyboards, three separate computers. Two desktops, one tablet. One desktop at home, one at work, tablet travels. This seems to be the fail point. The first failure was this morning, the tablet's keyboard wouldn't respond (at work) so I swapped it to the desktop, and still nothing. Then the same thing happened at home tonight, the oldest of the three keyboards stopped responding when I was swapping what had been the tablet's keyboard (the first to fail) with the home desktop's (which then also failed).

The desktops are both Win7, the tablet is ancient and XPSP2.

Nibbles > phenotyp 06/10/2014 at 22:41

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Well it could be receiver failure. As odd as that may be, its the only hardware point of failure that comes to mind. Have you attempted to pair them on a machine that has never seen them before?

If you don't have access to one and they are Bluetooth, completely uninstall the driver and the devices' BT profiles then try to re-pair. If they don't come up as discoverable, I'd have to say hardware failure is likely the problem.

itschrome > phenotyp 06/10/2014 at 22:42

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wow.. thats crazy. yeah I dunno man

phenotyp > Nibbles 06/10/2014 at 22:52

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It's been completely baffling. Drivers have been uninstalled and reinstalled on all three machines, and it seems like the ones that fail were the ones that connected to the XP tablet. That's pretty much the only link in the connection chain. I've swapped all of them, some more than others. The one on my home desktop has been the least-swapped, but it failed to connect either to the tablet or back to the desktop tonight. That's what really threw me.

Nibbles > phenotyp 06/10/2014 at 23:04

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Are they Bluetooth or 2.4? If Bluetooth, you need to remove the device profile from the BT manager as well, or the connector corruption can remain.

phenotyp > Nibbles 06/10/2014 at 23:11

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Arc stuff is 2.4.

Nibbles > phenotyp 06/10/2014 at 23:17

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Damnsauce. What about the dongle, have you tried a second one? When plugged in, does the computer recognize? If so remove the driver, the hw profile from device manager and the software suite and try from scratch?

(Apologies. I'm a systems admin, my desktop experience is a few years behind me :|)

phenotyp > Nibbles 06/10/2014 at 23:22

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No worries. Just throwing a Hail Mary. No clue what would have killed two or three keyboards in one day other than some BS MS update thing. One I can accept. Two of three, on three different machines? Total WTF.

Nibbles > phenotyp 06/11/2014 at 01:25

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Last ditch effort and I've only seen this work when you have built in or PS/2 keyboard: Uninstall every USB device from device manager, including the root hubs. Restart and let Windows reinstall. See if that fixes.