PRB: A USB Keyboard May Not Be Immediately Available After You Upgrade to Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 4 (831061)

SUMMARY

After you upgrade a laptop computer from Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) to Service Pack 4 (SP4), a USB keyboard that is attached to a docking station may not be immediately available when you log on after you dock the laptop the first time. Although you press keys on the keyboard to enter logon information, the input is not recognized. If you wait about 30 seconds, the keyboard is recognized, and then you can enter logon information.

Additionally, when the keyboard does become available and you log on, a dialog box indicates that new hardware was installed and that you must restart the computer.

Note This problem occurs only if one of the following circumstances is true:

If the laptop was never docked before you upgraded to SP4
If the laptop is docked to a new docking station

MORE INFORMATION

This problem occurs because of a race condition that exists when the USB keyboard device is enumerated.

When you dock a laptop computer the first time, the docking station and the hardware that is attached to the docking station are detected as new hardware. As part of this enumeration process, the driver for the new device loads and updates the registry with the specific settings that are defined by the .inf file that was used to install the device. After the registry is updated, the driver unloads the registry and then re-loads the registry so that the registry settings are correct.

In this particular case, when the keyboard is enumerated, a Human Interface Devices-compliant (HID-compliant) consumer control device is also detected and installed. When this device tries to unload its driver, an outstanding handle is still attached to the driver. Therefore, the driver does not successfully unload. When this behavior occurs, Windows is notified that the computer must be restarted to complete the installation of this device. As a result, the dialog box that is mentioned in the "Summary" section appears.