Keyboard and touchpad no input, power button is

John_Ford · July 26, 2024, 10:20pm

Framework 13,
intel 12th gen.
running: Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS

–
An exciting new problem I have discovered. Yesterday, seemingly out of the blue the framework internal keyboard and touch pad stopped working. The power button continues to function. and the laptop seems otherwise unaffected. I am typing this on it now actually, with an external keyboard and mouse, both of which work fine. The exact circumstances of the fault are unclear. The laptop was connected to an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor via a dock. I sent it to sleep, disconnected it, and opened it at home. I’m not sure if the keyboard and touchpad stopped working immediately after awakening it, but it was certainly soon after.

The internal keyboard and touch pad provide no input at all, not even at boot. This problem has persisted through multiple restarts. and through me carefully disconnecting and reconnecting the touch pad cable. However, the power button does work, suggesting that the cable connection isn’t really at fault.

Things I have tried:

restarting
restarting after being powered off for 8+ hours
disconnecting and reconnecting the touchpad cable while powered off

Though I have found a myriad of keyboard problems online, I haven’t seen any with this exact issue, still here is the output for dmesg | grep i8042 which seemed to be relevant to lots of similar problems:

[ 1.515105] i8042: PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:PS2K,PNP0f03:PS2M] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12
[ 1.516539] i8042: Warning: Keylock active
[ 1.520604] serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
[ 1.520608] serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
[ 1.520743] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input2
[ 6.950943] input: ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input4

Although I can use the computer connected to an external device, its a annoying and I would prefer the internal keyboard and touchpad work.

Thanks for any help!

Update It seems likely this is an operating system problem and not a Framework specific problem.

I got both the touchpad and the keyboard to work briefly. I noticed that in my display settings the system showed only the external monitor, and there was unexpected behavior when opening the laptop with the external monitor connected.

Normally when the external monitor is connected and the internal one is off (closed) it still reads the internal monitor. Now it no longer does. Even more unexpectedly, when the internal monitor is open it remains off and is not detected. In the past it would activate and automatically switch to the internal monitor as the primary display.

I noticed when opening the lid that the display would briefly appear in the settings. I closed and partially reopened the lid and for a few seconds while the display setting was reading the internal monitor both the keyboard and the touchpad functioned normally.

I even crrupted smthing and nw the external keybard n lnger accetps the letter “0” (zer here because i cant type the letter) prgress!

ext i eve maaged to switch the “o” with the letter ext to “m” o the keyboard. Much progress.

Away it seems likely this is a OS problem, sice the keyboard will work uder very specific coditios

truffaldino · July 26, 2024, 10:39pm

I don’t think the output of that command will shed any light on your issue. My FW is similar to yours and has a fully-functional internal keyboard and touch pad. The boot journal on mine contains the same set of entries.

$ (inxi && journalctl -b | grep i8042) | sed "s/$HOSTNAME/hostname/g"
CPU: 12-core (4-mt/8-st) 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1260P (-MST AMCP-)
speed/min/max: 434/400/4700:3400 MHz Kernel: 6.5.0-1025-oem x86_64
Up: 2d 14h 9m Mem: 6693.9/31796.2 MiB (21.1%) Storage: 1.83 TiB (47.9% used)
Procs: 436 Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.13
Jul 24 18:25:41 hostname kernel: i8042: PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:PS2K,PNP0f03:PS2M] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12
Jul 24 18:25:41 hostname kernel: i8042: Warning: Keylock active
Jul 24 18:25:41 hostname kernel: serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
Jul 24 18:25:41 hostname kernel: serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
Jul 24 18:25:41 hostname kernel: input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input2
Jul 24 18:25:41 hostname kernel: input: ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input4

Dino

James3 · July 26, 2024, 10:58pm

Power on and press F2 on the external keyboard during boot, so that it reaching the BIOS menus.
Once it is in the BIOS menus, try to use the internal keyboard to navigate around it.
If the internal keyboard is still not working, you have a hardware fault somewhere.
Cables:

Between mainboard and touchpad
Between touchpad and fingerprint reader
Between touchpad and keyboard membrane
Between touchpad and keyboard backlight.
Touchpad/keyboard itself is faulting.

Is the keyboard backlight working?
If you use the fingerprint reader, is it working?
If they are both also faulty just like the keyboard and touchpad, the most likely fault is the cable (1).
If the keyboard backlight or fingerprint reader is working, it is more likely a fault in the touchpad/keyboard.

John_Ford · July 26, 2024, 11:41pm

James,

Thank you for the help. There is an interesting new wrinkle to this story at the end and I am going to update the op. This seems to be an OS problem and I will probably post in the Pop!_OS forum.

But first, I did as you recommended and the keyboard was not detected in BIOS. I opened it up and did a quick visual examination of the cables and both the keyboard and touchpad. Both seemed fine, the laptop is about a year and a half old.

I actually have an older damaged input cover which I can swap out to check the integrity of this one later.

I do not use the backlight (it does not turn on from the internal keyboard) or the fingerprint reader.

The interesting wrinkle is that I got both the touchpad and the keyboard to work briefly. I noticed that in my display settings the system showed only the external monitor, and there was unexpected behavior when opening the laptop with the external monitor connected.

Normally when the external monitor is connected and the internal one is off (closed) it still reads the internal monitor. Now it no longer does. Even more unexpectedly, when the internal monitor is open it remains off and is not detected. In the past it would activate and automatically switch to the internal monitor as the primary display.

I noticed when opening the lid that the display would briefly appear in the settings. I closed and partially reopened the lid and for a few seconds while the display setting was reading the internal monitor both the keyboard and the touchpad functioned normally.

I even crrupted smthing and nw the external keybard n lnger accetps the letter “0” (zer here because i cant type the letter) prgress!

ext i eve maaged to switch the “o” with the letter ext to “m” o the keyboard. Much progress.

Away it seems likely this is a OS problem, sice the keyboard will work uder very specific coditios

Thak your for your help

John_Ford · July 26, 2024, 11:42pm

Thanks Dino, I added it since it seemed common to other questions of the same kind, but I now think this is an operating system problem since I can get the keyboard to work under specific conditions.

MJ1 · July 27, 2024, 3:14am

Any chance you have something triggering your lid sensor? Something with a magnet under your FW13 or to the left side, cell phone, another laptop, speaker, etc.

Have you tried loading an officially supported distro onto a flash drive, booting to that & checking if the issue exists there?

John_Ford · July 28, 2024, 12:15am

Interesting idea. So there is nothing in normal usage at causes the lid sensor to trigger. The laptop is not normally stored close to other metal objects or magnets. But there was definitely unusual behavior with with the lid sensor once i started playing with it.

What I did was use a magnet and a metal object to trigger the lid sensor by placing it/ touching to the left side near the 3mm jack. When the laptop was open and unresponsive, but the sensor was triggered the power key would light up and the keyboard and touchpad would work . They would work for a bit as long as I kept the metal or magnet close to the lid sensor. After a minute, or if I moved it away. The power light would deactivate, and the keyboard and touchpad would turn off. The screen also would deactivate. I could play this game for a bit with the sensor, but basically something was causing the sensor to constantly act as if the lid was closed, and it would read as open if it transitioned between states. I opened it up, checked the connection and it seemed fine, the 3mm jack (my understanding is the input sensor is a subcomponent of the audio jack) also worked fine.

I did not get a chance to try and use a officially supported distro on a flashdrive. Indeed I seem to have solved the problem by another means.

Solution

I happen to have an old FW13 input kit. To make sure there was not a hardware fault with the keyboard, I changed out the input kits. The new keyboard and touchpad worked! no problem with the lid sensor or otherwise. The old input kit has comestic damage that makes the power button sometimes randomly triggers the power button, but the systems worked fine.

Even more surprising was that once I powered down and replaced the old one with the new one it worked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Suddenly everything was back to normal. It was as if changing out the input kits had triggered some kind of reset. I even tested it by recreating the fault, unplugging it from a dock while closed and reopening it, no problem.

I’m sure someone more technically capable could explain what I did, I would like to know so I don’t need to carry a backup input kit. But I’m glad everything worked out.