Total Panic – No Keyboard

I'm sure we've all had instances when something has happened with our computers or cell phones that dumbfound and tighten our guts. We have no idea what happened or what we did and even less on what to do about it.

I was typing something and suddenly it stopped. I could hit all the keys I wanted and nothing happened!

Was it my word processor? I went through every darn thing on the toolbar at the top and there was nothing about a keyboard.

I checked every single connection to the back of my desktop. I then tried to do a search for keyboard using Cortana (I have Windows 10) and nothing! No letters appearing in the search box.

The mouse worked just fine so I went to the little windows icon and it opened up. But, where did I go without being able to type anything?

I clicked on restart and waiting to see what would happen.

After the wait, the screen came where I have to sign in. Amazing! I could type in my password in that screen.

Once the desktop came up, my heart fluttered as I found the keyboard working just fine.

What a relief.

And then...

Next day, everything working fine. Then, all of a sudden – dead. As the proverbial door nail. Nothing. Not a single letter on my word document. Not a letter in Cortana or my browser. Opened the Settings thing and tried to type in the search box – zip.

Thank goodness for the mouse. Found the Dell Support site and the telephone number. After an excruciating wait finally got a tech. My biggest problem was understanding him. I'm pretty good at understanding English spoken by a lot of people as their second language. But this guy had me totally lost.

I managed to finally get across to him what my problem was. He finally got to the point in his book where he told me to turn off the computer, holding the power button for 30 seconds. He then told me to turn it back on, tapping the F2 key. Lo and behold, there were three little icons on the lower right. The bottom line was getting me to enter a Safe Mode.

Let me make this short here. We spent at least thirty minutes doing all sorts of stuff I almost instantly forgot. Going here there and everywhere. He got me back to the Dell Support site and had me do some stuff to set my PC to Windows 10 and then download something called a BIOS. I have absolutely no idea what that it!

Anyhow, got it downloaded and then ran it.

Still no keyboard.

But I, at least, had the latest of whatever it is I'm supposed to have.

Still no keyboard.

We at last got back to Settings. He had me click on Ease of Access and then Keyboard. He had me click on On-Screen Keyboard and it appeared. He then wanted me to go somewhere else and I clicked on Cortana by mistake and …

The keyboard worked! The On Screen Keyboard was still there, but suddenly my real keyboard was working as if nothing had ever been wrong with it.

I kinda shut the guy down but not before learning he was in Manilla in the Philippines! And, his first language is Tagalog and not Spanish like most Philippinos. So I managed to get out of there and back to my computer.

The On Screen Keyboard still sits there in my task bar (or start up bar or whatever they call it) but my regular keyboard is back.

Still have no idea what happened. What on earth did I do to disconnect the keyboard? What's gonna happen if it does something similar after mid-January when my manufacturer's warranty runs out?

The Dell support forum has probably the worst layout of any other I've ever logged on to. The Windows support forum isn't much better. Ask a question and almost never get an answer – if you can find your question again.

Would love to find a decent discussion forum for Windows and PCs in General. Something to search for.

As you all can surmise, the keyboard's working – although my fingers still have a heck of a time finding the right keys – and I frequently stare at that little icon at the bottom of my screen and pray it's not gonna go blooey on me again.

Something to think about – being able to type, I went to Cortana and typed in “keyboard.” Got a wide variety of choices to include, “Keyboard, touchpad, or mouse not working correctly.”

Ummm, if they are not working correctly, how is one supposed to navigate to this page? Seriously?

Keep your fingers crossed.