USB Keyboard Keys Stop Working?

**abexman** · July 3rd, 2013

So this is strange. My Dell USB keyboard keys stop working in Ubuntu 12.04 at times. Cannot seem to figure out a way to bring them back. All the character keys seem to not be working but the "movement" keys work like alt-tab, arrows etc. But if I open a text editor and hit "qwertyuiosdfghj", nothing shows? The only place I seem to be able to enter characters is if I goto a lock screen (characters dont enter into the password field there) then goto to "switch user", I can then enter a username and password but get back to the original login, where I cannot enter characters? Is there some way to prevent this and/or fix this without rebooting? Thanks!

**tgalati4** · July 3rd, 2013

Look in dmesg for keyboard errors:

Code:

dmesg | tail -50

I would suspect a bad cable or a failing USB port. Examine the cable for worn spots and try moving it around. Try it on another machine, perhaps a Windows machine and see how it behaves.