After my friend shut down and restarted his Windows 11 PC, his wireless mouse stopped working. Several other mice were tested, but none were recognized, and the same result occurred with every USB port. It seemed like a possible USB or driver problem, but we weren't sure how to troubleshoot it. The issue was ultimately fixed by installing the pending Windows updates.
3 Answers
Check whether the mouse works in the BIOS. If it does, the hardware is probably fine and Windows or its USB drivers are the likely problem. If it doesn’t work there either, look for USB-related BIOS settings or a hardware issue.
If you need a temporary way to navigate Windows, enable Mouse Keys with the keyboard. Then check Device Manager for USB errors, or boot from a Windows installation USB to see whether the mouse works outside the normal installation. In this case, though, installing the pending Windows 11 updates solved the problem.
First try a complete power drain: shut the PC down, unplug it from the wall, hold the power button for several seconds, then reconnect everything and boot it again. This can clear some USB controller glitches.
We tried the full power cycle, but it didn’t change anything.