After installing Mate, Touchpad and Keyboard not working on win7

Orestes_Gonzalo_Manz · 15 June 2017 19:02

Hi you all! this is my first post in the forum. I am a newbie in Linux matters, but I try to solve things by myself following the forums as much as I can. However, for this problem I have not been successful:

I had previously in my laptop (LENOVO SL400, 64bits) dual boot for Windows 7 and Ubuntu 16.04 (Win7 was installed first). This worked without problems. I tried upgrading to more recent LTS versions, but the process finished abruptly and I was left without a properly working linux distro. It was completely broken. I could, however, use normally Win7 (no mouse, touchpad or keyboard issues, which leads me to conclude that this is not a “windows problem”).

I created my ISO with Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS (I decided to try the MATE desktop), and it was installed without problems. The madness began when I rebooted and tried to go to Windows 7 again. Neither keyboard nor touchpad worked. I plugged in a USB keyboard and a USB mouse (which already worked with the MATE recently installed), and only the mouse allowed me to interact with win7.

I want to stress the point that this was working perfectly with Win7 before installing MATE.

I will now list the things I have tried (sorry for writting a long post ,but I think the right thing to do is to give as much detail as I can):

In the window where you can see the properties of the keyboard, which was listed as “hardware with problems” or something on those lines, I could read a message that said the following: “Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration data (in the Registry) is incomplete or damaged (code 19)”. ->This is a translation from spanish… so it might not be the exact wording in english. I went through the forums and followed the instructions to fix the “code 19” error for keyboard, which consisted in going to the registry, locating the folder of the “keyboards”, and deleting a “LowerFilter” or “UpperFilter” thing, which I did. I re-booted, and it didn’t work (I used the keyboard on the screen with the mouse to do these things, from the Accessability options).
I tried to update the controllers, looking for a newer version online. Didn’t work. When trying to look at the controllers in disk, it said that it had already the most up-to-date controller for the device.
I tried going to the BIOS and setting everything with the default values, saved and continued booting. It didn’t work.
In one forum, someone who had a similar problem, “solved” the problem installing VMware over Ubuntu, and installing Win7 in a Virtual Machine. I don’t think I would like to do this, as I had a working Windows already… and my machine is not abundant in resources, so running win7 over a VM does not seem like a good idea in terms of performance for an old laptop.

Please, forgive me if I have not followed the guidelines and rules properly… of the forum, I mean… and if I missed some answer to this problem. I looked in the search bar for this issue, but didn’t find any pertinent result.

Hope you can give me some ideas to try… as I wouldn’t like to uninstall MATE… I love it.

Orestes

1Q7FE6zp · 15 June 2017 20:14

Do the peripherals (mouse, keyboard, etc) actually work normally in Ubuntu?
How are you shutting Ubuntu down when switching to Windows?
As opposed to updating the drivers for the peripherals, just remove them from Windows’ Hardware Management panel and reboot. It should just reinstall them, cleanly.

Orestes_Gonzalo_Manz · 15 June 2017 21:14

Thanks!
Answering your questions…
*Yes, Peripherals work normally in Ubuntu.
*I shut down using the system’s “shut down” button.
*I will try uninstalling the drivers and rebooting!

Orestes_Gonzalo_Manz · 15 June 2017 22:42

Okay. Uninstalling the drivers and rebooting did not make windows install them properly. I executed the driver which installed itself via a “setup-style” window. Still didn’t work after that.

However, something new has happened: when I look at the properties of the keyboard in the Device Manager, it says now “This device cannot start (code 10)”… which is new. The error I had before was “code 19”.

Some extra information: I had before Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (vanilla ,… not MATE)… it dual-booted alongside win7 without problems. I made the mistake of trying to upgrade to 17.04… but left the laptop alone. It ran out of space in the linux partition and the installation of the upgrade crashed, leaving a corrupt distro in that partition. The next thing I did, was downloading and creating the .ISO in a USB stick to install again Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, but this time it was MATE… from the official web-page of Ubuntu MATE.

It changed the GRUB interface to a more “stylish” one (the previous was just black screen and DOS-like options in white text. Just before I decided to install MATE, I had rebooted and went into Windows 7 (with the Linux corrupted distro in the other partition), coz I wanted to play a game.

The next time I rebooted, was to boot from the USB-stick and install MATE overwritting the installation of the corrupted distro. It went without any problem… and you know the rest of the story. Don’t know if this additional background adds something useful.

Orestes

1Q7FE6zp · 15 June 2017 23:26

As much as it pains me to say this because being a customer service representative by trade, I really hate to have to point at something or someone else. I always prefer having the solution but in this case, the problem is not Ubuntu.

Thing is, if the peripherals work fine in Ubuntu, obviously the hardware is fine. And error code 10 really does point at a device driver issue in Windows (just Google it and I can also confirm this from personal experience, used Windows for essentially decades). Installing a dual boot of Ubuntu is not going to end up corrupting device drivers in Windows, Ubuntu should not (and does not) manipulate the existing Windows partition to that extent.

Deleting the LowerFilter and UpperFilter registry keys probably did not directly help the situation either although it might still be part of the solution. Point is, Windows is now simply in a “broken” state.

Here is some more information, someone with a similar situation:

And here is another good read on the subject:

Orestes_Gonzalo_Manz · 16 June 2017 00:05

I think I can agree in that the one giving the error is Windows. However, how can we interpret that it worked until Ubuntu was installed? I think we can separate two things here:

the problem was caused by the installation of ubuntu.
the consequence is that something in the booting sequence for windows is broken.

I think there are two things that may happen:

I can fix the problem only tweaking windows (for example following links like the ones you kindly pasted in the reply)… or:
I will not be able to fix it as long as the dual-booting with ubuntu is there, unchanged.

I don’t know if there should be some tweaking to be done in BIOS, or GRUB… for it to be solved in windows. I might be just saying silly things (as a proper noob does haha), but it is just something that worries me.

I will try following the threads you are pointing out… I will report back as soon as I do! thanks for the help.

1Q7FE6zp · 16 June 2017 00:22

[quote=“Orestes_Gonzalo_Manz, post:6, topic:13729”]1) the problem was caused by the installation of ubuntu.[/quote]Caused by… not sure. That the problem surfaced as a result of the installation, true enough. Again, the installation of Ubuntu does not, never has and never will touch Windows’ device drivers.
I’ll admit though, it’s a very strange consequence of dual booting.[quote=“Orestes_Gonzalo_Manz, post:6, topic:13729”]2) the consequence is that something in the booting sequence for windows is broken.[/quote]No. Windows is clearly telling you what is broken. I know Device Error Code 10 quite well, in fact. And, I’m telling you, the solution is to be found in Windows.[quote=“Orestes_Gonzalo_Manz, post:6, topic:13729”]2) I will not be able to fix it as long as the dual-booting with ubuntu is there, unchanged.[/quote]I don’t have any money but I’m willing to bet that removing Ubuntu at this point will not fix the problem.[quote=“Orestes_Gonzalo_Manz, post:6, topic:13729”]I don’t know if there should be some tweaking to be done in BIOS, or GRUB[/quote]BIOS – No. Because that would imply a hardware problem. And since the keyboard and mouse are working just fine in Linux, there is no hardware problem. GRUB – It’s not entirely impossible but highly improbable. It would imply that the act of creating a dual boot somehow corrupted/confused Windows. And your keyboard and mouse failing seems like a bit of an odd symptom of that. Had the dual boot truly been the cause, I would have expected Windows not booting at all. In case of a failure, of a problem. Not… just your keyboard and mouse not working.