virtualbox.org

When I run VirtualBox 5.04r1025546, my USB keyboard on my Windows 10 host randomly dies.

It happens often while a VM is booting, but sometimes, even when there's no VM running. Once it happens, the only fix is to unplug and replug my keyboard.

The computer is a Dell Precision M4800. The laptop keyboard continues to operate, and the mouse that's attached through the keyboard continues to operate.

My keyboard is an old Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro, so I suspected it, but it works fine when VirtualBox isn't running. I used VirtualBox a lot on this system before Windows 10/VirtualBox 5.x.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jamie

Sounds like you have a USB filter configured on one or several VMs that automatically capture your keyboard. Maybe you forgot the filter in the config, or the filter itself is missconfigured and captures more than what you think.

Glad that I am not the only one seeing this. Also on Windows 10.

This also happens to me even when there is no VM running - I just launched VirtualBox and played around the settings in the "Create new VM" dialog. Suddenly I could not type anything, the host keyboard died out. All LED went off, and pressing the NumLock/CapsLock/ScrollLock keys won't trigger any LED back on. When it first happened I don't know what the cause is, so I unplugged the keyboard USB and tried (1) plug it back to the original port, and (2) plug it to another USB port. None of them worked. Also, Windows should normally play a sound when a USB device is plugged in or unplugged. No sound is played at all when the keyboard is dead. The keyboard won't work until the system is restarted. Oh, and when the keyboard is killed Windows will kind of freeze on the "restarting" screen when I chose to restart it (I said "kind of" because the spinner animation still goes on). I need press the power/reset button to really have it restarted.

It seems that only the USB keyboard is affected. The mouse still works.

When it happened again when I am in the VirtualBox application, I started searching for similar case and found this thread.

EDIT: This seems to have been resolved with the latest test build (VirtualBox-5.0.5-102676-Win.exe).

EDIT2: No it isn't resolved. In the old (5.04r1025546) build, keyboard dies after about 1-2 minutes of usage, so I was too excited to claim it's fixed when the keyboard still working after several minutes using the latest test build. But in this 5.0.5-102676, my keyboard dies out after about 10 minutes of usage.