Wireless USB keyboard and mouse can wake system, but then receiver is inactive

Question

I have a Microsoft brand USB device that acts as a receiver for a wireless Microsoft Keyboard and a wireless Mouse. When it's operating normally, there are LEDs on the device indicating Caps Lock, Num Lock and Function Lock, of which the latter 2 are usually lit. It is plugged into a Dell Isnpiron 531 with Windows 7 32-bit running on an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core processor 5000+. When the computer goes to sleep (the power indicator on the main box is flashing), I can wake it by moving the mouse. So far all is good.

However, something changed in, I think, the past couple weeks (I suspect due to a Microsoft driver update problem). Before the change, after waking the computer, everything would operate normally as far as I could tell, but now after waking the computer, the receiver has no lights on, and the keyboard and mouse are completely unresponsive (which is odd, considering the mouse woke up the computer).

There is a button on the receiver that's supposed to reset the wireless connection and flash the lights while it does so, but it has no effect in this state. It's like the receiver doesn't have power (but how would the system know I moved the mouse, unless the power was on until it woke up?).

I have checked the BIOS/CMOS settings or whatever you call them, and did not see anything related to USB in the power management section. I have checked Windows 7 device manager and ensured that all the USB Root Hub devices have the setting unchecked for allowing the USB power to be turned off.

Like I said, this was working before, and the only thing I can think of that's changed is applying Windows Updates.

Answer 1

This sounds a lot like a keyboard/mouse problem I am working on, where my system freezes at the "user selection" logon screen in Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 32-bit. I am going to assume you are using the Microsoft proprietary 2.4 GHz dongle about the size of a flash drive with the green light that supports many varieties of keyboard and mice from Microsoft. I am also going to assume you are having problems with the latest version of keybd/mouse drivers.

Not so long ago, you had separate IntelliPoint and IntelliType driver packages from Microsoft. The latest Intelli* driver packages are combined. The very latest incarnation is the "Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center" application. I suggest that you look in "Programs and Features" control panel for MMKC version 1.1 which contains IntelliPoint and IntelliType drivers versions 9.1.486. If you don't see MMKC, then look for IntelliPoint and/or IntelliType items. The version of the combined drivers that I had installed just prior to letting Microsoft Update do its thing were versions 8.20.468. The downloadable installer is named "IPx86_1033_8.20.468.0.exe". Make sure you have a copy of your driver package(s) or know where to go at Microsoft to get them and then uninstall them. Your mouse and keyboard should work fine without the drivers but you will lose your special keyboard key definitions and mouse button definitions. I would also suggest that you have a wired keyboard and a wired mouse at hand in case you have trouble after the uninstall.

If you remove the MMKC application with Intelli* drivers v9.1.486 and that is the source of your problem, then backrev to the combined IntelliType/Point driver package version 8.20.468. If that causes problems, then you might consider not using the advanced Microsoft drivers and run your pair as standard devices or backrev further if you can still find older driver packages. Since you had things working well until lately, I suspect that backreving from v9 to v8 will do the trick. If I am wrong, you can ding me and put back the MMKC.