Windows 11 Update Breaks Recovery Environment, Making USB Keyboards and Mice Unusable (tomshardware.com) 95
"Windows Recovery Environment (RE), as the name suggests, is a built-in set of tools inside Windows that allow you to troubleshoot your computer, including booting into the BIOS, or starting the computer in safe mode," writes Tom's Hardware.
"It's a crucial piece of software that has now, unfortunately, been rendered useless (for many) as part of the latest Windows update." A new bug discovered in Windows 11's October build, KB5066835, makes it so that your USB keyboard and mouse stop working entirely, so you cannot interact with the recovery UI at all.
This problem has already been recognized and highlighted by Microsoft, who clarified that a fix is on its way to address this issue. Any plugged-in peripherals will continue to work just fine inside the actual operating system, but as soon as you go into Windows RE, your USB keyboard and mouse will become unresponsive. It's important to note that if your PC fails to start-up for any reason, it defaults to the recovery environment to, you know, recover and diagnose any issues that might've been preventing it from booting normally.
Note that those hanging onto old PS/2-connector equipped keyboards and mice seem to be unaffected by this latest Windows software gaffe.
"It's a crucial piece of software that has now, unfortunately, been rendered useless (for many) as part of the latest Windows update." A new bug discovered in Windows 11's October build, KB5066835, makes it so that your USB keyboard and mouse stop working entirely, so you cannot interact with the recovery UI at all.
This problem has already been recognized and highlighted by Microsoft, who clarified that a fix is on its way to address this issue. Any plugged-in peripherals will continue to work just fine inside the actual operating system, but as soon as you go into Windows RE, your USB keyboard and mouse will become unresponsive. It's important to note that if your PC fails to start-up for any reason, it defaults to the recovery environment to, you know, recover and diagnose any issues that might've been preventing it from booting normally.
Note that those hanging onto old PS/2-connector equipped keyboards and mice seem to be unaffected by this latest Windows software gaffe.
Sex with Microsoft (Score:2)
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The only useful thing the recovery mode seems to be able to do is kick off a reinstall of the OS.
Other than that, its becoming full has killed Windows Update on a bunch of PCs last year, then again this year with the Windows 11 update. Meaning, the updates won't run even if your PC is otherwise working and you have no reason to enter the recovery console.
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Mod parent funny. But also sad.
Is there such a thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder, are there any computers that both have a PS/2 port and also can run Windows 11?
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I'm not sure if it is still true but for some time, IIRC, laptops used a PS/2 interface for the touchpad.
Re: Is there such a thing? (Score:1)
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I have a pocket 3 and am happy with it. It has a somewhat normal keyboard, touchpad and can run a standard Linux distribution (I use Ubuntu). Serial port is also useful for configuring a switch or whatever. I have the more powerful model, but do not really use CPU-intensive stuff on it.
I managed to drop and break it once, the screen fell off and tore off the connector from the cable. I wrote to GPD and they sold be the hinge and cable assembly, no problem. So, my experience with them has been great. The onl
Re: Is there such a thing? (Score:1)
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I would assume my ASRock H510M-HDV/M.2 Intel LGA 1200 microATX motherboard can if it runs W10. I still use my OmniCube KVM from Y2K!
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Loads do, including mine.
Even bang up to date motherboards come with them, look up:
Gigabyte B860M EAGLE V2 (LGA 1851) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard
as an example.
The PS/2 user. (Score:1)
Loads do, including mine.
Even bang up to date motherboards come with them, look up:
Gigabyte B860M EAGLE V2 (LGA 1851) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard
as an example.
I’d call this a rather unique non-solution really.
Those that have a PS/2 port in 2025 and don’t have a clue as to what the hell it is, have never used a recovery console and never will.
Those that have a PS/2 port in 2025 because they know what the hell it is, are running Linux.
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Those that have a PS/2 port in 2025 and don’t have a clue as to what the hell it is, have never used a recovery console and never will.
Those that have a PS/2 port in 2025 because they know what the hell it is, are running Linux.
those that post retarded shit like this is the reason why linux is going nowhere,,,, quick - say something stupid about systemd, or having "choice" in 38 sound daemons......
We’re here still bitching about shitty technical support for the planets most ubiquitous comm port in the year 2025, and you’re still wondering why Linux hasn’t taken off?
No Shit is why it has gone nowhere. We can’t even get USB right after 30 fucking years.
Re: The PS/2 user. (Score:2)
Im not running Linux, my MB has a PS2 port and i have a PS2 model M.
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Uh, some of us in Windows land use PS/2 for NKRO gaming.
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I'm on a Mac you insensitive clod!
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I wonder, are there any computers that both have a PS/2 port and also can run Windows 11?
As I see it on the internet there's people that are gamers that have at least the perception on the advantage of PS/2 for the lower latency. To cater to this market people making computers for gamers will put PS/2 ports on them. Whether there's any reality in the advantage of PS/2 over USB for gaming is kind of debatable.
Having dealt with computing environments where security is an issue the loss of PS/2 creates problems. One issue is that there may be a requirement that there be no interface available t
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The Dell Optiplex 7090 SFF sitting next to me ready for my brother to pick up to replace his Windows 10 machine is both running Windows 11 and has PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports.
ps/2 (Score:2)
Re: ps/2 (Score:2)
The PS2 ports on most new MBs can handle a mouse or KB, the port a colored purple and green.
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The two ports are sometimes merged into one, and are on newer motherboards. This is possible because the ports didn't use overlapping signalling pins. On older Thinkpads you'll find merged PS/2 ports, and the laptop itself came with a splitter you could use if you wanted to use both an external keyboard and mouse.
I don't know how common those splitter cables are or even if they're a standard part, I always thought it was an oversight at the time not to just make the ports support both given that'd both be e
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Pretty much any desktop or server motherboard still has a PS/2 port.
I can still plug in my AT keyboard using a passive AT to PS/2 adapter.
Re: Is there such a thing? (Score:2)
Mine has a PS2 port, it's a cheap Asrock board.
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I expect you can get some industrial mainboards that have both. But essentially, you are fucked if this happens to you.
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On laptops, no. On desktops, most come with PS/2 ports even though you've been ignoring them. It's a corporate standard and it's easier for mobo makers to just incorporate them than divide their line into "PS/2" and "Non-PS/2".
Every motherboard I've bought for a project, be it a personal server or a gaming rig, has come with PS/2 ports, and the last motherboard (a generic B450) I bought just two years ago. Only had one PS/2 port (possibly requiring the use of a splitter - yes, combined PS/2 ports that work
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It's not uncommon to find white-box motherboards with a PS/2 port. I've seem them on contemporary AM5 boards from Gigabyte, Asrock and Asus; the Northgate Omnikey I'm typing on is still plugged in to a PS/2 port.
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Sure are. I have several.
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Bought a new computer in June and it came with a PS/2 port. Motherboard is a B760-based MSI "bulk" model that I believe they sell to gaming PC assemblers. Definitely a modern board with PCI-E 5, DDR5, etc.
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We were *told* back in the early 2000s, when USB was still horribly unreliable, that computers with "legacy" ports (PS/2, RS232 serial, and parallel) were going to be a thing of the past "very soon". At the time, it didn't happen. A couple of large manufacturers released a couple of models each with no legacy ports (e.g., Compaq with its iPaq line, and let me just remark on what an early-2000s product name that is), and then then due to popular demand they
Comment Subject: (Score:1)
>>Note that those hanging onto old PS/2-connector equipped keyboards and mice seem to be unaffected by this latest Windows software gaffe.
The whole reason I keep a ps2 kb around, for rough environments that have no USB drivers.
>>IT personnel will also be particularly affected by the Windows RE bug since a lot of sensitive system repairs are tied to that toolkit
*who didn't keep one around
(okay so the overlap of W11 motherboards and ps2 ports is virtually nonexistent, i'm still gonna pretend i can
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This is the reason I spent time to virtualize Windows via Proxmox with PCI passthrough. Minor overhead increase on the CPU that is never pegged in exchange for a dead-simple way to roll back shitty updates with ZFS snapshots.
The best way to fix Microsoft products is to virtualize them in QEMU / KVM.
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Xen/QEMU works just fine with Windows VMs
Well that is fairly normal (Score:2)
You need to enable PS/2 emulation in your BIOS settings. USB support is spotty at best on many systems. It's not uncommon for it to not work on boot loaders. Also when Windows came out, USB didn't even exist.
Re: Well that is fairly normal (Score:3)
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WinRE is not a bootloader. It has had perfectly functional USB support since the days of Vista. Also what is PS/2? Is this something boomers used to confuse for a playstation? (I'm joking, but only kinda, computers haven't shipped with PS/2 for a long time, and the option for PS/2 emulation no longer exists in modern BIOSes meaning you can't even use PS/2 > USB adapters to get old keyboards functional).
But seriously which era is your computer from? You're talking about something I've not seen for over 15
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I should add to this that one of WinRE's primary use cases is to reinstall Windows from installation media, i.e. USB. A version of this pre-dates Visa and USB support has actually been part of it from Windows XP days. But WinRE as an installed system component only came about with Windows 10.
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...computers haven't shipped with PS/2 for a long time...
I probably would have guessed that, too, but the first Intel motherboard I looked at on Micro Center's web site has a PS/2 port. For AMD motherboards, I had to look at three before I found a PS/2 port.
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That is genuinely interesting. You're absolutely right I just checked Microcentre's website and about 1/3rd of the motherboards on the front page from Intel have a PS2 port, and one even has 2 for separate mouse and keyboard...
Curiously I could only find one single AMD board. Mind you for $800 that motherboard better include a blowjob port too.
When normal, shouldn’t be. (Score:2)
USB support is spotty at best on many systems. It's not uncommon for it to not work on boot loaders.
USB support is spotty? After this many decades, fucking why again? Unless your next design release has zero physical ports, the hell are you even doing in electronics manufacturing? As if consumer goods are using some other physical comm bus? We act like shitty USB support is acceptable because serial ports are still all the rage, and FireWire went TikTok viral just in time for Christmas.
Also when Windows came out, USB didn't even exist.
I remember 1997 too. Win95 running on new computers with these funny slotted ports no one knew how to use yet. Incl
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Yes, USB support was added to the OSR 2 of windows 95.
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Yes, USB support was added to the OSR 2 of windows 95.
Back in the era of paper MCSEs and Microsoft-sponsored government panic over the “threat” of Novell, I was under government orders to speedrun my way through the newfangled NT 4.0 MCSE track before getting deployed next month.
The Win95 enhanced classroom back then was advanced, but not quite that advanced.
Pajeetware (Score:3, Funny)
You can feel the difference between Microsoft products made by competent US-teams, like VSCode, and the outsourced Indian slop, like Windows 11 and especially Explorer.
Re:Pajeetware (Score:5, Informative)
You can feel the difference between Microsoft products made by competent US-teams, like VSCode, and the outsourced Indian slop, like Windows 11 and especially Explorer.
This comment is a textbook example of American exceptionalism divorced from reality. VS Code isn't made by 'competent US-teams' and it never has been. The core development has been led by teams in Zürich, Switzerland and Seattle, with the Zürich team under Erich Gamma driving the project since its inception. The Monaco editor that powers VS Code was developed in Europe, not the United States. The suggestion that US engineering teams are inherently superior to those working elsewhere is not only factually wrong but contradicts Microsoft's own organisational structure. Microsoft's India Development Centre in Hyderabad is the company's largest software development centre outside Redmond, and these teams focus on strategic and IP-sensitive product development, and hardly what you'd expect if the work were considered 'outsourced slop'. Major American tech companies deliberately establish world-class engineering centres across Europe and Asia precisely because that's where exceptional talent is concentrated. The notion that quality software can only come from American teams ignores decades of evidence: from ARM's British origins revolutionising mobile computing, to the Nordic countries' contributions to telecommunications, to the extraordinary engineering coming out of India, Taiwan, South Korea, and beyond. The distributed, international nature of modern software development, drawing on diverse perspectives and round-the-clock productivity across time zones, is a strength and not a weakness. Dismissing entire regions' contributions with crude stereotypes says far more about the commenter's prejudices than it does about engineering quality.
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Most of MS software is slop though, so if much of it comes from India, then there's a certain correlation there.
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The FTP protocol (yes ATM machine, PIN number, RAS syndrome, I I know what I wrote) was invented by an Indian. They also have their own home grown RISC-V processors. Beyond IT we owe a lot of microwave research to foundations developed in India, including designing the first microwave horn antenna, and they are a big player in research and development for quantum key distribution for communication, the DRDO developed their own home grown ramjets and scramjets, they pioneered the first cars and engines opera
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Indians can be good engineers. Some of the best mathematicians have been Indian. But generally speaking (like, for example, if you outsource your engineering to an Indian farm or hire a ton of H1-Bs) they are NOT good engineers. They're among the worst.
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Major companies do not outsource to a farm or hire H1-Bs. They open central engineering offices in India with their own engineers on staff. That is the context of this discussion. Microsoft has 10 such large offices in India.
Conflating everyone based knowing someone who hired the worst person is silly. It's like the only news we get in Europe is about Trump or starts with "Florida man..." you can imagine if people formed an opinion of Americans in general based on this.
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Large tech companies do both, including Microsoft. I speak from experience.
>Conflating everyone based knowing someone who hired the worst person is silly.
That's not an accurate summary of my experience, nor what I've heard from colleagues. Obviously Slashdot comments are limited, and all you have is my word that this isn't a rash judgment.
> It's like the only news we get in Europe is about Trump or starts with "Florida man..." you can imagine if people formed an opinion of Americans in general based o
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>The core development has been led by teams in Zürich, Switzerland and Seattle, with the Zürich team under Erich Gamma driving the project since its inception
Have a source for that? Either way, that fits. I didn't need to say US-teams, it was just less wordy than "US or European teams, or high-IQ and exceptional Asian talent, with competent, intelligent engineers rather than outsourced Indian crap."
My point isn't about US exceptionalism, it's about Western exceptionalism.
And Western developers
missing tests? (Score:2)
Is there any intermediate fix?And other questions. (Score:3)
I dual boot with the OS selection being done at UEFI level - I have to press a key at boot time to get UEFI boot selection dialog. I don't get the selection dialog if I do normal reboot in Windows, only if I do Shift+Reboot - which was, at some point, announced as a way to "avoid fast boot". Nowadays it seems to be described as a way to enter Windows Recovery Environment. How/why does fast boot skip UEFI boot selection dialog? Would disabling fast boot in windows solve the issue for me? I.e. would I get UEFI boot selection dialog but skip entering the Windows Recovery Environment screen?
Re:Is there any intermediate fix?And other questio (Score:5, Informative)
A few things:
a) the description mentions Hello (specifically mentioning USB) and Cryptography. Both touch on WinRE - it's not just a boot process, it's a micro version of Windows. My guess is they screwed something up there.
b) the Shift+Reboot has nothing to do with UEFI. It has to do with Windows telling UEFI to follow a specific boot process. While at one point Shift+Reboot was an emergency restart that specifically forced a full UEFI cold boot, Microsoft changed Window's behaviour to do a warm boot directly into the WinRE environment. This is windows triggering how the computer is restarted - and that has been a problem since the days of Windows 7 where a "reboot" was not as rebootish as the name implied.
If you're trying to find an easy way to get to the UEFI screen you could try creating a command line shortcut. "shutdown /g" should force a full shutdown and cold boot. "shutdown /fw" should force the computer to open the UEFI screen. "shutdown /o" is the one that AFAIK puts you into the WinRE advanced boot menu.
Not sure if any of those specifically fix your problem.
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Fast startup - turn it off (Score:5, Informative)
The behavior you're describing and working around with arguments to the shutdown command is typically caused by the confusingly-named fast startup (not to be confused with UEFI fast boot, which might also cause irregularities in the boot process but is controlled by the system firmware/UEFI and not Windows). It can (and IMO always should be) disabled with ctrl+r > control > hardware & sound > power options > change what the power buttons do/change what closing the lid does > uncheck "turn on fast startup." It causes way more headaches than the few seconds it saves on each boot and as there are no other benefits; I always disable it.
/s will disable it for the next boot.
/fw might need to be combined with an active option like /r /s or /g in order to actually function.
It's normally only a problem with a shutdown, though, not a restart; doing a restart from within Windows' UI is already supposed to bypass it, which is why we'd always tell our users to restart their PCs once a week. But, if you're on a computer with fast startup on *and* want to do a shutdown *and* bypass fast startup, simply doing shutdown
Also, I think shutdown
Can they fix laptop keyboards + fast boot next? (Score:2)
I upgraded my Carbon X1 to Windows 11 recently and after that my keyboard does not work on normal boot up from a shutdown state. If I restart it to get a full cold boot then it works fine. I've seen a couple [reddit.com] more posts [reddit.com] on this issue and the only solution is to disable Fast Boot so every boot is a full reload. Saw some mention this started with a 2024 feature update, so it's been an entire year now with no fix.
To destroy the West: China & Russia ... (Score:3)
need do nothing more. They appear to have outsourced the problem to Microsoft.
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Indeed. And things are proceeding nicely according to schedule.
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Because a bug that'll be fixed in short order will "destroy the west"? If this actually is a risk then the problem wasn't Microsoft. Maybe we've just a bunch of soft pussies who deserve to be destroyed.
How utterly incompetent can MS get? (Score:3)
Apparently, this was not tested. And this is a "you are fucked" level bug. Well, I guess reinstalling Windows may (or may not) fix this. Welcome to amateur-hour.
At the same time, Linux recovery (for which you have multiple options) continues to work just fine.p
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Apparently, this was not tested. And this is a "you are fucked" level bug. Well, I guess reinstalling Windows may (or may not) fix this. Welcome to amateur-hour.
At the same time, Linux recovery (for which you have multiple options) continues to work just fine.p
As does macOS Recovery.
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Indeed. Apple got it when they put it on a Unix basis.
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Indeed. Apple got it when they put it on a Unix basis.
I assume you meant “Apple got it right” (actually NeXT got it right; but. . .) ;-)
And even got it right-er by making it a Microkernel Architecture.
(Sorry; couldn’t resist!)
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No. I meant what I wrote.
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No. I meant what I wrote.
And I meant what I wrote. Except my writing is clear; yours is not.
What is the antecedent of “it” in your Post?
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The respective part of the universe. "Getting it right" does not imply understanding why it is right. "Getting it" implies understanding, possibly with a flawed execution.
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Which is why you're insane to run Windows on bare metal if you don't have to.
It's sad when dealing with IOMMU + PCI-E passthrough is more reliable than Windows USB support surviving a patch deployment.
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I run it on bare metal for my teaching laptop, and there all the secrets already go into sharepoint anyways (not my choice). I do have on-paper reducandy for all grades. But no sense investing in high security secure when the organization does not. (Also, sad times when the IT department of a tech university tells you they only support "exchange" for email access...) I also have to use teams for video-streaming when teaching and that tends to cause problems when virtualized. And teams is already unreliable
This is maybe a regression (Score:1)
Windows 11 could really use a win but it just dows (Score:2)
Windows 11 is becoming the OS that people will love to shit on, and of course, I'm no exception, eat shit you adware ridded, TPM requiring, local account disabling, Farming Sim suggesting piece of shit!
OSK always broken (Score:2)
Re:software always broken (Score:2)
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Of course you could just create your own version of that by running Linux and creating a Windows VM, which allows you to snapshot and revert. Extra credit if you base your VM storage on a sturdy filesystem with built-in snapshotting like ZFS.
Shitty updates that fuck you over are a VM stop + restore away from not being a problem any more.
"Update" (Score:3)
Laughs in Windows 10.
Terrible how Microsoft abuses it's paying customers.
Service packs these days aren't what they used to be.
Customers should really consider whether Windows 11 is the right platform for them.
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Terrible how Microsoft abuses it's paying customers.
Indeed. 99.99% of them won't even notice they had a bug in their software before it is fixed. How dare they feel so abused. It's like that time I got touched as a little boy at school. Okay I didn't actually get touched, but I read somewhere that someone touched someone else and that could have been me so I felt abused by it!
In the meantime I'm still facing a Thunderbird regression that hasn't been fixed leaving me the option of running a version of Thunderbird several years out of date or simply use Outloo
Ps2? (Score:2)
Time to focus on Linux hypervisors? (Score:2)
I do wonder about having a Linux distro (qubes, perhaps?) use KVM or another Linux tier hypervisor as a default, then run Windows on top of that. Downside is gaming performance loss, and other performance issues. However what having KVM can provide is hypervisor based AV, firewalling in the hypervisor, disk snapshots and backups, so if the Windows VM does, it can be rolled back, as well as an easy way to recover it. The hard part is having fast graphics drivers that can display from the Windows viewing
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I'm doing this, right now, at home. I added a cheap eBay Quadro M4000 card and installed Proxmox with that as the primary GPU for the Linux host, and then used IOMMU to share the Radeon RX6900 XT, sound hardware, and USB keyboard / mouse into the VM, which is backed with ZFS storage for snapshotting.
Fuck your shitty updates - when I see there's an update available, I snapshot the system. If the update fucks the system, I revert to the snapshot and ignore that update.
I see maybe a 1-2% performance hit for
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I'm curious how the displays are attached to the Windows VM. Directly or via a remote session program?
Doing it the way you described is probably one of the few ways to keep Windows managable.
Only Microsoft (Score:1)
No keyboard found (Score:2)
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