VeraCrypt Bootloader and Keyboard functionality
Open source disk encryption with strong security for the Paranoid
Brought to you by:
idrassi
Menu
▾
▴
It seems I'm having a problem that is becoming more and more frequent. When starting up, I go into bootloader and am prompted to enter my password. Cool. Problem is that more and more frequently, my laptop keyboard is unresponsive and I can't enter in anything. At that point, I have to hard reset and try again. Eventually that will brick my HD. What's odd is that it doesn't happen every time and I have experienced this issue on more than 1 computer. My search hasn't turned up anything. Does anyone know what the issue could be?
Are you using a wireless keyboard to USB receiver?
There have been sporadic reports on the forum of people experiencing problems when using wireless keyboards.
I wonder if this may have something to do with a BIOS setting.
For example, on my HP laptop using a wireless keyboard I was experiencing a 10 - 15 second delay on boot-up before Windows would accept any keyboard typing. I changed the BIOS setting on my laptop shown below to remove the delay.
I've seen those reports from my searches. No, using the keyboard on my laptop. Its really driving me nuts. One day I'm going to hard reset and lose my HDD and all my data.
Can you post your make, model and which Windows version you are running on your laptop?
Maybe another community forum member with a similar make and model can confirm your issue or it maybe the keyboard or motherboard is going bad.
Those details shouldn't matter. As I've said, I've dealt with this on multiple stations. Everything I have is basic, updated, and running fine. This is a Veracrypt issue. Are there any settings I can check out? This is driving me crazy and there will come a day where I fry my HD if I let it continue. Is there somebody else I can talk to? Developers?
I have deleted your redundant threads. Please request help from this thread.
I am requesting help from this thread. Can anyone respond please?? Can anyone direct me to someone who might know the answer?
I have a Asus K54C with Windows 10.0.19043, but like I said, I've had this problem on my other station as well. Everything is 100% fine otherwise and this only started after setting up VeraCrypt.
Bump
This is really a head scratcher, isn't it? The fact that it's becoming more and more frequent certainly seems to point towards a deteriorating element of hardware, and yet you've had the same issue with another computer. Is it possible that this sporadic misbehavior could be caused by a weak CMOS button battery inside? Your ASUS laptop is about a decade old. Can you remember replacing the battery? And how old is that other computer? I've seen a few reports that weak CMOS batteries have caused boot time weirdness, including failure to recognize certain hardware, even without giving an explicit error message to that effect. Hopefully it's something that basic.
Thanks for the reply. Yes, this laptop is about a decade old now (And I love it for that reason; I use it daily). I have not replaced the CMOS battery, but I haven't had reason to. I'll do it anyway, thank you for the suggestion. I'll give that a shot and report back. The other laptop is about 5 years old.
Welp, that didn't work. It stalled on the second boot. What can I try next?
From the very start, you pointed out that this non-responsive keyboard issue at boot time is occurring with increasing frequency over time. Since software bits never degrade (although the medium on which they're stored sometimes does), it seems logical that this is a hardware issue of some kind. My first guess was the decade-old CMOS battery, but every other guess will also be hardware-related. At the point where the problem presents itself, no element of Windows or its drivers has even begun to load, so that can quickly be dismissed. What you have is a very simple VeraCrypt bootloader calling BIOS service routines to monitor for keyboard input, and with increasing frequency no keystrokes can be detected without rebooting. A weak CMOS battery seemed like low-hanging fruit that might be causing the problem, and everything else is likely unfeasible to replace or repair on such an old laptop. The thing I still can't explain is why you would have had this same intermittent issue on another computer. At the risk of being labeled a quitter, I quit :)
I don't think this is directly related to the OP's BIOS or age of computer, nor to a weak CMOS battery.
I have the exact thing happening on my 2 year old Clevo laptop:
If I turn the machine on and just let it get to the VeraCrypt password prompt on its own, there's about 3 in 4 chances that the keyboard input stops accepting keys before all characters have been typed. The freeze can happen at any time during pw and PIM input.
On the other hand, if I press F7 on this machine to display the boot device list, and then selecting the boot drive (even though I select the same as on previous boot), the keyboard input never freezes. Let me say that again: never. Oh, and my laptop has 3 drives, if it matters.
I would love for this to be fixed, since it means I'm pressing F7 on every boot to avoid the annoyance of the keyboard lockup.
If there's any more detail I can provide or somebody wants me to test a fix, I am happy to do so.
Yes... It is really really annoying.
UPDATE:
Well it seems the problem has been solved. I can't be certain that it is working, but this is the longest I've gone without having the original problem.
What changed since my last post? I reset the CMOS. When I replaced the battery, I still ran into the same issue, but I also had a problem where I couldn't start my laptop without it being plugged in. So since I reset the CMOS, I haven't had the keyboard issue. Its been 30-40 starts now and the keyboard issue used to occur every ~10 starts.
Thanks all for the help. Gary Marks, thanks for getting me where I need to be.
The new VC update made no difference here, still hangs more often than not.
Anybody else having this problem, please speak up.
I'll make a guess; could be something timer related since it kicks in after a random amount of time?