My user sessions (between reboots) usually last quite long because restoring loaded context (apps and data) is rather expensive. So I use 'sleep' feature, esp. on a laptop!
The most weird thing happened over the weekend. I had friends over with two 5 year-olds. They played by themselves and I'm sure they tried to use the laptop, because when I opened it Mon evening the login screen was set to High Contrast and several other EaseOfUse options were checked. Of course they didn't know the password, so they couldn't get any further. And no offense to them, it's my own fault for leaving the [closed] laptop in the room. But the question is not about that.
Monday evening the only way to log in to my session was to turn on the OnScreen Keyboard, and then use the same inside the session. Quite inconvenient!
All properties in Device Manager are good, no warnings, "This device is working properly" all over, all related setting in Control Panel look right.. But no responses to any key presses, including a few with indication (Fn has a LED, and NumLock has an on-screen overlay [which I hate, but in this case it would be helpful]). Fn keys have a choice for primary action (since they also do things like volume, brightness etc.), if I flip that choice the LED is lit. Flip it back - LED goes off.
Yesterday I discovered that keyboard actually works: in login screen I opened EaseOfUse dialog and accidentally hit the Spacebar, focus was on Cancel button, so the dialog closed. Huh?! I started typing the password and a row of *s appeared!!
But once I was logged in the keyboard again was dead. I checked everything I could think of - all looks good and normal. If I try to SwitchUser I'm back to screen where I can choose between 2 accounts using .. <- and -> keys (so again keyboard works)! Once the choice is made, I can type in the password.. And then I'm back to a dead keyboard upon logging in!
I also noticed that the SysInfo dialog from ProcessExplorer gets moved to the left ~100px (I always align it to bottom-right corner of the screen); this usually happens when screen size is set smaller. This happened twice already, but I didn't do it. Vertical position did not change.. What gives?
I've googled and found lots of similar cases, but they all are either about drivers/ other software (Win10 updates to name a few), or straight hardware failures. There were no updates of any kind..
Since keyboard is functional out of user session, this does not look like a hardware failure. I'm quite certain, the problem will disappear on its own if/when I reboot. Thing is, I'm not ready to lose the context yet, and saving it without keyboard is a PITA.
I'm .. "the word I'm looking for is .. befuddled" (ha-ha): as an experienced computer engineer in 30 years I've never seen anything like this! Does anybody have a clue?
