New Wireless Keyboard works on Windows 7 laptop, but not Windows 7 Desktop!

canuckbb

Reputable
Mar 19, 2014
6
0
4,510
A new Asus wireless keyboard, works perfectly on my older Windows 7 (HP) laptop. However, on my expensive Asus desktop, also running Windows 7, they keyboard will only register one (if any) keystroke, then will cease to work. All drivers appear to be properly installed, and the BIOS shows no updates. Any idea why this would be?
 

canuckbb

Reputable
Mar 19, 2014
6
0
4,510


I uninstalled the drivers for ALL keyboards, and reinstalled just the wireless-- still no response.
 


Look under "Device Manager" and see if your keyboard is installed, and make sure that there isn't another keyboard that is the "active" keyboard. This would be different than the driver. You can have a device installed with no driver.
 

canuckbb

Reputable
Mar 19, 2014
6
0
4,510


So after some fiddling it appears USB 3.0 works over a very very short distance. This is very odd, since the laptop does not have USB 3.0. Also, 1.5 ft away from the desktop, it will record 1 in every 20ish keystrokes, but held up right next to the receiver, it will type perfectly. With the laptop, it works from across the room. AH! I am very confused...
 


Try changing the batteries. Even if they came with the keyboard there is no telling how long they sat on a shelf somewhere.
 

canuckbb

Reputable
Mar 19, 2014
6
0
4,510



I am on the 3rd set of brand new batteries. Besides, it works flawlessly on the laptop which is right next to the desktop... it is the strangest thing! If it didn't work on the laptop so well, and from so far away, I would think that it is a defective receiver. But that does not seem to be the case... the issue seems to be with the desktop.
 
If the little USB dongle is behind the computer, put it in the front or side somewhere to bring it physically closer to the keyboard. Also, changing port may help. I've had a million people swear to me that one port was different than the other, despite being all USB 2.0 or 3.0......whichever they have.
 

canuckbb

Reputable
Mar 19, 2014
6
0
4,510


First thing I thought of too, but had no effect. The weirdest part is that if I hold up the keyboard to right next to the receiver and type, it works perfectly. Its as though there isn't enough power to the USB transmitter--if that is a thing? But the wired keyboard in the same port works flawlessly. And, again, it makes no sense that a big desktop with a much larger power supply would be unable to power a little transmitter, but a small laptop would.
 

canuckbb

Reputable
Mar 19, 2014
6
0
4,510


So very strange. It now works in both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports. THANK YOU!

Just to be clear... I still have the faster transfer speeds through USB 3.0, correct? Because of the internal controller for USB 3.0...
 


Glad it worked! I should have thought of it sooner, but the problems that I have seen corrected by disabling USB 3.0 did not include your particular problem. But there was a meriad of problems that it has worked on so I thought, "Why not? Give it a shot." It worked, so all is great!

As far as the high transfer speeds still being there, I in all honesty can't answer that. The only sure fire way to know is to try it out. If it doesn't still give you the USB 3.0 speeds, you can always just change it back if you have a large transfer that needs to be performed. For all of the "little" things that we use USB for, it doesn't really give you all that big of an advantage. If you have a 4mb song for instance.....does it REALLY matter that it took 6 seconds instead of 3 to transfer it? Not really.

Hopefully they will introduce a new firmware or patch of some sort to get the USB 3.0 issues taken care of. Although USB 3.0 is a wonderful technology and gives speeds 10 times what USB 2.0 does, there are still a lot of bugs to work out of it.