Laptop keyboard not working upon start up: WINDOWS 11

Laptop Specs:

• DELL-5502
• 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz (1.69 GHz)
• RAM 16.0 GB

I recently (about 3 or 4 weeks ago) upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Using the Microsoft windows 10 installation assistant. Everything has worked fine since 2 days ago or so.

In the last few days, I've had to restart my laptop a few times because the keyboard is completely non functional upon start up. Upon restart, the keyboard works.

I tried restarting Windows explorer (rather than a total laptop restart) but keyboard still did not work.

Not sure if there was an update that screwed things up. Maybe others are experiencing the same?

I have run sfc /scannow and it came back with no issues.

But now, it seems to be happening every time that I turn on the computer (with fast start enabled). It was intermittent the last few days, now it's all the time. I uninstalled my keyboard drivers. That didn't fix it. So I've turned off "fast start up" and for now. it's a work-around. Disabling fast start up allows the keyboard to be recognized on startup, but I'd like to know what's causing this, rather than a band aid work-around solution.


things were fine with Windows 10.

@Reginald_Turnip

The Oct 9th update caused this issue with some systems.
They released a fix in the Oct 20th update.

It would help if we knew the exact Windows version you are on.
If you can, type: winver in the Taskbar search box, and tell us the version.


If you can't type... right click the START button and go to System > About ...and it will also tell you the version.
Like so...






Version xxxxx.6899 had the problem, and version xxxxx.6901 fixed the problem.



Side Note: Most of us have Fast Boot disabled in the BIOS and Fast Startup disabled in Windows.

THANKS for the quick reply,

Yep, I have windows build .6899 (image below). Thanks so much. I'll update to latest. And yeah, maybe I'll just keep fast start up disabled.

Reginald_Turnip said:

Thanks so much. I'll update to latest.

Click to expand...

If it doesn't show up in Windows Update, you can get it here... via the Microsoft Update Catalog.

Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem. I updated to the latest OS build, and I'm still having the issue

I now have build 26200.6901 and still no functioning keyboard upon start (with fast start option).

Reginald_Turnip said:

and still no functioning keyboard upon start (with fast start option).

Click to expand...

As I mentioned before... most of us have Fast start disabled. Less problems that way.

Is it the laptop keyboard or an external one?
If external, is it wired or wireless?

Nope, it's not an external one. For now, I'll stay with fast-start disabled (not much choice really), but it's unnerving that there's a glitch lurking somewhere on my laptop lol. Hopefully another update will fix it.

Reginald_Turnip said:

Hopefully another update will fix it

Click to expand...

DELL probably has a utility to check for up-to-date drivers.
You may want to try that?


Also do this. Option Two, steps 3 thru 8...



This will prevent Microsoft from installing their drivers over your drivers, which sometimes corrupts the installed driver.
MS drivers will still be available as an Option if desired.

@Reginald_Turnip

I'm guessing that what happened is that MS included a keyboard driver in a Windows Update.
And that it corrupted your working keyboard driver.
The tutorial in post #8 will prevent that from happening again.
So... after the tutorial, install the proper DELL driver again, and this time it should stay un-corrupted.

enable fast startup, reboot, when keyboard is not working > go to device manager > disable keyboard and then enable it again. does that work? if so i can make you a script to run at startup for now so you can at least have fast startup enabled if thats what you want

dacrone said:

enable fast startup, reboot, when keyboard is not working > go to device manager > disable keyboard and then enable it again. does that work? if so i can make you a script to run at startup for now so you can at least have fast startup enabled if thats what you want

Click to expand...

I don't have the ability to disable the keyboard driver. It's greyed out. I can't disable or "rollback" the driver. But I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the keyboard driver, then turning off the computer, and that didn't work.

I guess I'll have to accept the fact that Microsoft screwed me with an update or something, and I'll just keep fast startup turned off.

Try what I stated with this tool