A handful of users, including me, are experiencing intermittent keyboard and mouse freezes. While typing, input suddenly stops for around 15 seconds, then the buffered text appears, sometimes with missing keystrokes. The mouse can stop responding during the same period and then recover. It may happen once or recur every few minutes.
I have replaced the keyboards, mice, and wireless dongles, tested wired devices, disabled Windows USB power-saving settings, and tried every USB port on both the laptops and hub monitors. The issue affects brand-new and several-year-old peripherals, as well as devices managed through Intune and devices that are not. There does not seem to be an obvious hardware or management pattern. Has anyone encountered this or have suggestions for narrowing it down?
4 Answers
One possible cause is a Microsoft Store version of Spotify that has reportedly caused Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and peripheral dropouts. If any affected machines have it installed, uninstall it and reboot to see whether the freezes stop. It would be worth checking even if Spotify seems unrelated.
Are all of the affected users working through docking stations or hub monitors? A dock, monitor hub, USB controller, or related firmware issue could explain why replacing the individual peripherals has not helped. Testing with everything connected directly to the laptop is a useful comparison.
We do use hub monitors, but I have already tested the peripherals through the monitors and directly through every USB port on the laptops.
Does the problem occur across the entire system, or only in particular applications? If the mouse and keyboard stop responding everywhere at the same time, I would focus on USB, dock, chipset, Bluetooth, or system-level drivers. If it is limited to one application, that points more toward the application itself.
It may help to compare the affected users more closely: whether the devices are wireless or wired, the keyboard and mouse manufacturers and models, laptop models, network connection type, and whether the users sit near one another. Also note whether the freeze happens everywhere or only inside certain applications. A shared location, driver, dock firmware version, or application could reveal the pattern.
Unfortunately, none of the affected users have Spotify installed, so that does not appear to be the cause here.