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Intermittent XPS 13 keyboard malfunction after Windows 10 update
End of February, I purchased a Dell XPS 13 notebook (i7-5500, 512Gb SSD, touchscreen version). I updated the system to Windows 10 about a month ago (August 1st), and installed new Windows 10 drivers from Dell. Since Monday August 31, my keyboard is malfunctioning. All of this coincided, but need of course not be related to Mondays Windows' update. The symptoms are as follows:
1. The keyboard stops working, none of the keys respond to typing;
2. The keyboard backlight is suddenly switched on;
A third symptom that may or may not be related is that the colour of the battery light occasionally changes to solid orange (normally indicating a nearly exhausted battery) even when battery is fully charged, and the power adapter is plugged in.
The touchpad, attached mouse, and touchscreen keyboard still work fine. The keyboard problem seems to be intermittent. On reboot things are usually as normal, but after a while the keyboard will start malfunctioning, requiring an annoying reboot.
Needless to say I did run a full system scan (Norton 360) to check for malware, etc. As expected, the test found no problems.
Most likely, the keyboard malfunction is caused by some software problem. How do I solve this?
Robert-Jeroen
6 Posts
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September 24th, 2015 18:00
I did a clean install of windows 8.1, followed by an update to windows 10, and installed the Dell drivers for Windows 10. Unfortunately, my keyboard problem returned. A few minutes after rebooting, the keyboard backlight would flash on, and the keyboard would stop responding to typing. For a notebook, that is unacceptable.
The only solution was to return to windows 8. I don't like win 8, it's ugly, it doesn't make sense, but it's stable. Windows 10 wasn't. So, I won't go there again until those bugs have been solved.
Still not sure if the Dell drivers for windows are causing the problem or (more likely) if windows 10 is buggy. Regardless, it's goodbye windows 10 for me. Goodbye, and maybe see you later, but much, much later.
hatchetjoe
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July 30th, 2016 20:00
I'm having a similar frustrating problem. My XPS 13 9343 is about 5 weeks out of warranty. I updated to Windows 10 about 3 weeks ago from Windows 7. Everything seemed fine and everything worked as it should including my docking station. But for the past week I have trouble getting the computer to turn on. If the computer is off I press the on-off switch and the switch lights but noting appears on the screen and none of the other lights blink or turn on. I press the on-off again to turn it off and the fan runs briefly and the light on the on-off button goes off. I then repeat the on and off cycle until the Dell logo finally appears then the computer seems entirely normal. Some times it starts fine on the second or third cycle but sometimes it takes 15 cycles. I have removed the docking station connection and driver without any change. I ran all of the Dell diagnostics and the extended diagnostics and everything checks fine. I updated all of the major drivers: video, disk, etc. without any improvement. If I close the screen the computer will not restart without totally powering down and then going through the on-off cycle again and again. I really afraid that one day it will not restart and I will have a dead computer. The nature of the problem makes me think that there is a software problem related to the screen closing. I have spent many hours on this blog trying to find a solution.
I have thought about trying to reinstall Windows 10 but if I do that I will lose one of the programs I really need to do my work and I don't have a way to reinstall it easily.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.