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I am looking at a Windows 10 laptop (a surface pro 3), that will not recognise USB mice or keyboards.

The USB port is happy with storage devices (including microcontrollers), USB UART devices, USB Video capture devices, USB Ethernet adaptors. It is able to connect to a Bluetooth mouse.

The mice and keyboards I have tried work in other Windows 10 laptops (a Dell) and non windows computers.

But any USB keyboard or mouse, I've tried multiple times, result in the same messages:

The Last USB Device you connected malfunctioned and windows does not recognise it

Then in device manager, it has a yellow triangle. The properties for this says:

Windows has stopped device because it has reported problems (Code 43) A request for the USB device descriptor failed

Due to the age of it, this laptop was likely installed as Windows 8 and updated to Windows 10.

What I have tried:

  • Uninstalling the device (via the device manager uninstall) and rebooting.
  • Removing any remaining Logitech software (in case there was some specific mouse interfering there).
  • Windows updates
  • sfc (found something, but trying other options still resulted in no changes)
  • Disk scan (found nothing)

Short of a reinstall or Windows reset (nuclear option other than replacing the laptop), are there other options I could consider?

Danny Staple
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  • You can download a Live Linux system, install it to an USB stick and boot from it. If on that Live Linux systems USB 1.1. devices like keyboard or mouse also don't work then the cause is most likely a hardware defect. – Robert Aug 02 '22 at 12:44
  • Also try updating BIOS (UEFI) to see if that helps. – John Aug 02 '22 at 12:49
  • @Robert good idea - I'll give that a go. – Danny Staple Aug 02 '22 at 13:25
  • I'll try @John's suggestion of a UEFI update - there's a surface firmware tool. After verifying with the LiveUSB stick - which will tell me if it's a hardware thing. – Danny Staple Aug 02 '22 at 13:25
  • Ok - LiveUSB stick did the same. Ubuntu showed the same issues - error -71. No USB mouse or keyboard would show up in LSUSB or work, dmesg all showing the same kind of errors. – Danny Staple Aug 04 '22 at 19:48
  • What kind of hardware defect would lead to hard drives being just fine in the same USB port that rejects mice and keyboards? The UEFI BIOS update might be interesting, need to find out if there's an available update. – Danny Staple Aug 04 '22 at 19:49

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