x17 R1, keyboard stopped working

Hi @sukeruton welcome to this free user-to-user Alienware laptop discussion forum. 

This is a known problem, please look at: -  

Keyboard Intermittently Does Not Work on the Alienware m15 R5 Ryzen, R6, x15, and x17 Laptops | Dell US 

Keyboard Usage and Troubleshooting Guide | Dell US 

I ended up reverting back to Windows 10. I followed the directions listed in the first link, after I looked at the troubleshooting guide. When I install and run the cherry firmware update, it gives me a pop up that says it didn’t install correctly. I also get two notepad docs that says “fail” and “3” in my folder.

I am currently experiencing an issue where my keyboard is not working intermittently. It will work randomly for a couple seconds and stop again for long periods sometimes indefinitely. I have had to plug in an external keyboard and it has no issues with that. I also cannot install the alienware command center app, it continues to fail no matter what I've tried. 

If you have not tested the Keyboard firmware updates, please do so and let us know.

* Go here
* Insert your private Service Tag
* Click Search
* On the right under, "Quick links", click View product specs
* Find your keyboard
* Click the down arrow to expand
* Look for either Cherry or Per Key

Once you have identified the keyboard installed, download and install the correct firmware shown on the Drivers & Downloads page for your specific model. When finished, restart the PC and retest.

Hello and thank you for your information.

Before this, I tried the Cherry Keyboard update and it failed with a code 3. With your instructions, I found I have a Per Key Keyboard. Unfortunately, I am still getting the Fail, code 3.

<Private data removed from public view. DELL-Admin>

Thank you

I uninstalled Alienware Command Center, deleted programdata, appdata, and removed its files from regedit.  My keyboard works just fine now (using it to type this).  I tried reinstalling AWCC and it bricked the keyboard again.  So I repeated the above steps and it works again.  So you either get a working keyboard or a laptop that doesn't perform well.  Without AWCC this laptop isnt good for gaming anymore.

I was hit with this issue this week. Very frustrating. There might be multiple causes but I will describe mine, and the solution.

The keyboard connects over an internal USB. I identified two oddities.

1. The bus works correctly with plenty of activity right up until the OS starts, when it goes idle. Permanently. This may not be an issue in itself, if that's how USB suspend works, but there is clearly a problem as it never resumes, even upon key press.

2. The D- line is not going low when the bus is idle. When driven by the host or keyboard, it's fine, but when idle it is around 1.5v.

If you encounter this problem, try one or more of these:

1. If you are using Windows, follow the advice elsewhere to disable power saving in Device Manager. This should work, but I would consider it a temporary and inconsistent bandaid.

2. Remove the bottom cover of your laptop, and locate the ribbon cable on the left, just above the battery, with the blue pull tab. Normally the advice would be not to turn the laptop on if you have the bottom cover off, but if you boot and wait until the keyboard stops responding, then remove and reinsert this cable, it should work. This disconnects and hence power cycles the keyboard daughter board. Unfortunately the keyboard backlight is not reinitialised so it will remain off. If fiddling with this ribbon cable doesn't consistently and immediately enable the keyboard, then your underlying problem is different to mine. This is not a fix (unless you're willing to do this every time you boot!) but a good diagnostic step.

3. Turn everything off and remove the battery to access the keyboard daughter board. Remove and carefully reseat all of the ribbon cables on this daughter board, especially the top-left, labelled "KB". These can be finicky and are fussy about how they're inserted. Boot, and check if keyboard behaviour has changed in any way. If some keys work, but others don't, there is a good chance this is your problem, as it indicates that the USB signals are correct. Try reseating the KB ribbon cable multiple times (technically it's unsafe, but you can do this while it's running).

4. If still no luck, check if you have the bad USB signals like me. You'll need an oscilloscope. The yellow arrow in the attached image points to a row of 3 pads in the D- net (the row of 3 pads below are D+). I'll leave it to you how you manage to probe this while running. For me, with the laptop still upside down and the battery removed, I opened it about 30 degrees, positioned my probes, plugged in power, and carefully hit the power button. If everything looks good, your problem is different to mine. If the bus goes idle, you can try to mess with it to unstick it (eg. tie D+ low momentarily for a bus reset).

5. If your D- looks weird (not <0.3V at idle), or if you are willing and able to give this a try anyway, take note of the 1k resistor I have added in the second attached pic, between D- and 0V. This ensures D- is in a valid low state when it's supposed to be, and completely fixed the problem for me. (Obviously not everyone has the equipment and experience to do this. If you would like to try this but don't know how, remove the daughter board from your laptop - it's only held in by 2 screws - take it to an electronics repair shop, show them the two pictures I have attached and tell them it's an approximately 1k resistor. Quick and easy job.)

Regarding the firmware update utility, the keyboard must be recognised correctly else the utility exits with an error. That is, if you are experiencing this problem then it is impossible to run the firmware update utility. Catch 22. Anyway, I was able to get the utility to run successfully and can confirm it does *not* resolve this issue.

Good luck. Hopefully Dell can find a fix for this in firmware.

@Blademaster999​ Same issue, cannot update returned code 3 and a fail result txt

Сегодня я столкнулся с такой же проблемой, не могу обновить драйвера, клавиатура работает сама как захочет. Временным решением проблемы является отключение компьютерной мыши и подключение обратно, но это на какие-нибудь 3-5 минут, не более. Пока печатал этот текст клавиатура отключилась дважды, но боковые тумблеры по прежнему работают, тумблер микрофона и тумблер блокировки Windows. Данный драйвер не имею возможности установить, так как происходит конфликт с Windows 11 

Today I encountered the same problem, I can’t update the drivers, the keyboard works as it wants. A temporary solution to the problem is to disconnect the computer mouse and connect it back, but this will only take about 3-5 minutes, no more. While typing this text, the keyboard turned off twice, but the side toggle switches still work, the microphone toggle switch and the Windows lock toggle switch. I can’t install the Per Key firmware because there is a conflict with Windows 11.

I am having this very same issue.  Just started last night, Feb 24th.  I had been using an external keyboard in my office for about a month (which is unusual) and decided to unhook from my office setup and head to the couch with my laptop.

All was working well for several hours, then Alienware wanted to update a bunch of drivers and software.  After that, the keyboard just stopped working.  I could get it to work again by pressing FN-F1, but it would only work for a few seconds.

After that I flatten it, re-installed everything to factory.  Updated all of the drivers again and it was still behaving badly, only working intermittently.  I can go into Alienware CC and I was able to get it to see the Cherry keyboard during one of those brief periods where it was working.  I setup the lighting, etc.  Prior it would not even see the cherry keyboard.  Progress! OR so I thought.

Now I can get it to work by flipping through the FX tab in Alienware CC and moving from the external keyboard config to the internal keyboard config, but it will only work for a brief period before going unresponsive again.  

You guys have something that's taking over the keyboard or shutting it down and it never restarts until I manipulate the config tabs in Alienware CC.  This is a $5000 piece of hardware that is no longer fit for purpose while still well within its productive years.  Its 2 years old.  

I have tried the firmware update several times as well.  It failed to install several times until I was able to kick it off during the brief period that the keyboard was working.  No fix.

Please fix this.

Same. Fail and return code 3

Hi, I got same problem. I was gaming and keyboard stop working in the middle of the game. I tried updating all the drivers but keyboard still not working. My warranty expired, so I got no support. Anyone know how to fix this issue yet?

Same issue, did all the things, won't even work in bios, I can get to bios with it and 2 seconds later it quits. Help your customers Dell

I have the same issue on my x17 r2 with cherry keyboard. I checked the firmware update for my device and there were none. Then I downloaded the cherry firmware utility for the overall model and it seemed to run fine. I got a result "PASS", and status "2". However, this did not fix anything. I tried turning off power management for the keyboard, overall system power saving, HID firmware upgrade, and many other things. Nothing helps. It's a 2-year-old laptop. Any news on this Dell?

Edit: After the keyboard stops working, I need to change some settings in Alienware CC to get it running again. Fn+F1 helps sometimes. But it's annoying and extremely inconvenient to have to do this every 5 seconds.

@mbzzz​ Hey there!!! You have been the only real solution I have found online to fix this problem.  I did the resistor method on the daughter board and keyboard was finally detected and the "Device descriptor failed" error on device manager went away.  The only issue I got now is that a few keys on the left like the letter "a" and "q" are not working.  Do you think I might used the wrong resistor? (I got it from a spare nintendo switch board).  I soldered exactly where you soldered yours, can I solder on another point in case needs more?  

Thank you so much! hopefully you can read this message.  I truly thank you for sharing your information and knowledge!!!!