Sleep Issues -- Keyboard & Mouse

Hi guys, firstly, sorry if there are millions of threads on this already. I know 7 can be a pain for random sleep issues. I had a quick search and didn't find anything quite like what I'm experiencing though.

Sometimes, when my PC wakes up from sleep, the keyboard and mouse don't work. It just sits there on the password screen with the cursor flashing. It doesn't happen all the time, and indeed only seems to happen after a longer period asleep (usually first thing in the morning but even then not every time, so it's not exactly easy to replicate).

I can connect to it from my laptop via VNC and everything is still running fine. I can then close all my programs and reboot it gracefully rather than having to hit reset. Once it reboots it all works no problem.

If I go into device manager I can see I have three items under Unknown Devices: 'Razer Pro|Solutions' (my mouse), and two instances of 'USB HID Device' which obviously sounds like a keyboard, but I'm at a loss as to why there are two (will get a screenshot of this next time it happens).

I've unplugged everything apart from my keyboard and mouse prior to putting the PC to sleep and this still occurs. I've tried uninstalling (including checking 'delete driver software' box) and reinstalling these devices over my VNC connection, but they just come back the same. Plugging a different USB mouse in gives the 'device failed to connect' sound and nothing else. Next time it happens I'll try plugging in some other USB devices while connected over VNC.

This only started happening a week ago. The only change I made was to install a new CPU heatsink/fan. It was just a swap from the stock Intel one to a similar Akasa one -- just push-pins, no removing of motherboard, five minute job all good. The only thing that I changed was to enable Q-Fan in the BIOS.

When I first noticed the issue, I worked backwards over what I changed and disabled Q-Fan but without it it's incredibly loud. I have since installed Asus AI Suite, which enables CPU fan control from within Windows.

To reiterate; sleep has been working flawlessly for about six months, and I've changed nothing else hardware or software other than what I've mentioned. Please tell me I'm crazy and Q-Fan/AI Suite can't possibly be what's messing it up! I've been over everything else I can think of, but hopefully you guys will have some more suggestions 'cause it's driving me mental.

Relevant specs:

Win7 Ult x64 -- updates set to notify only
Asus P5Q with latest BIOS
Q9550 @ 3.4GHz
8GB RAM

All latest drivers for GFX, chipset etc. Let me know if you need any more info. Can dump output from msinfo32 or whatever if needed.

Cheers!

Will have to check for sure next time it happens, but I think there's nothing under keyboards or mice.

I agree it does sound like a drivers issue to the extent that it looks as though the drivers are not being reinitialized on wakeup. It seems more like a core part of the OS's I/O system that's not waking up properly than a single device/driver, though. That's what's really got me baffled.

tranceaddict84 said:

Will have to check for sure next time it happens, but I think there's nothing under keyboards or mice.

I agree it does sound like a drivers issue to the extent that it looks as though the drivers are not being reinitialized on wakeup. It seems more like a core part of the OS's I/O system that's not waking up properly than a single device/driver, though. That's what's really got me baffled.

I recently got caught on this one with an XP machine... so if the suggestion doesn't pan out on win7 it's not my fault

Many motherboards have jumpers that allow you to set USB ports to power down during standby and off states. This is fine for memory sticks and flash cards but if you connect your KB and Mouse to ports that power completely down, (i.e. the +5 volts is turned off) it could be they're not being reset properly when the system starts back up.

Grab a copy of your motherboard's manual and take a look at the jumpers... what you want to do is set a jumper that connects your keyboard and mouse to the 5 volt standby supply instead of the general 5 volt supply. That way they'll stay alive when in standby mode... On my ASUS these are labled USB-5SB, but that can vary from maker to maker.

Right, not wanting to jinx it but I think I've fixed it. Hurrah!

I found from device manager that both the keyboard and mouse were trying to use drivers 'hidusb.sys', 'hidclass.sys' and 'hidparse.sys'. The message in device manager implies these files to are unabled to load, locked out due to already being loaded.

What I did was install another copy of Windows 7 to a spare HDD. Browse to %systemroot%\System32\drivers on my old install. Take ownership of the relevant .sys files, set my permissions on them to full control and move the files to the root of the drive (it wouldn't let me do any move/delete/rename operations on them before I forced the permissions).

I then rebooted into my main install and as expected, my keyboard and mouse didn't work. I logged on through VNC, went to device manager and did scan for hardware changes. It found the keyboard and mouse and reinstalled them, they worked right away and lo and behold, the three .sys files I removed have magically reappeared in the drivers directory.

I put the PC to sleep last night and it woke up fine this morning. Fingers crossed it'll stay that way!

Best guess is there was a power interruption at some point when the PC was in S3 standby, it didn't resume properly and that's what's caused Windows to get its tits on an angle about the driver files.