Today my ROG laptop has started acting up. When I boot Qubes 4.3.1 I get no response from the KB at the Disk decrypt screen or at the user sign in. I can plug in a USB keyboard and it works fine. Once I sign in as user my laptop keyboard works perfectly until I reboot. Up until last night everything worked fine. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your support.
Do you know if, internally, your laptop keyboard connects via PS/2 or USB? You can check by seeing if it shows up in the Qubes Devices widget after booting.
Hello and thank you for the quick reply. Yes the keyboard is usb connected. The model this is on is an ASUS ROG GU501GM. The outside keyboard is a generic Raspberry Pi KB
How’s your Qubes USB keyboard policy configured? Deny/Ask/Allow?
Did this happen after an update?
On a computer I have, the same thing happened after an update, where the kernel module for the USB controller I was using for the keyboard had been split into different ones, so it was not being loaded anymore. It does not seem too likely in your case, but I thought about bringing it up just in case it helps.
I have been experimenting with a few ideas and have discovered that there seems to be issues with the latest Dom0 update. Currently I am operating off of the pre update Dom0 and all seems well. I am testing to see if there are any issues with fedora 44. I don’t believe there is because I was using 44 before the issue. I will let you know what I discover.
Thanks again
Ok I verified that the problem is caused by the latest Dom0 update. I went through a complete reinstall. Install default system. Create Qubes. Update fedora-43-xfce to fedora-44-xfce. Updates appropriate Qubes to new template.
After every step I shut the machine down and restarted with no issues at all. Now Qubes update service notifies me of an update to Dom0 and Whonix gateway. I perform these and restart. Presto…no laptop keyboard at the decryption passkey entry and none at the user login. I plug in my handy third party USB KB and I can type normally. After I log in as a user the laptop keyboard starts operating normally.
Please let me know if there is any other info I can provide.
Thanks for all the help
Hi hammerhead8599 
Can you use the normal keyboard at the GRUB menu (before the disc decryption menu)?
If so, does it make any difference to select “Advanced options for Qubes ..” → “Xen hypervisor ..” → each of the older kernel ?
If you make new reinstall, can you make a backup of
dom0:/etc/dom0:/boot/grub2before the dom0 update and then compare the files after the update?
yes I can use the original KB at the GRUB menu. I did try the other older options on the original system but to no avail. When I get back in the office I’ll retry them.
I will also do the requested backup and see what that shows.
Thank you for the suggestions
SDS
Hi hammerhead8599
If the old (“known good”) kernels stops working, then it’s probably some change to the GRUB settings you need to look at (in dom0:/boot/grub2/?).
@ChrisA I have checked the directories you mentioned and did find slight differences. Is there a way you would like me to post this as a text file? I don’t want to spam the chat.
Hi hammerhead8599
Did dom0:/boot/grub2/grub.cfg change?
If so, then I assume you can do something like:
diff -u /path/to/old/grub2/grub.cfg /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
and then look at the first section with multiboot2 and module2 lines (feel free to reduce the rd.luks.uuid=luks-some-uuid substring to something short like rd.luks.uuid=was-here, if you want to share it).
I suspect the end of the line that starts module2 /vmlinuz-.. has changed (added/missing/changed some option?). If so, you can make a note about the old options, reboot, hit e to do a one-time edit to GRUB and “add old options / remove new” and see if it makes the keyboard work.
Good morning. An update from yesterday. I was going to do a reinstall when I noticed on the ISOs grub menu that there was a fifth option using a different kernel than the first option. I installed that and voila no more keyboard issues. The kernel this one uses is 7.0.9-1.qubes.fc41.
Oh well has worked perfectly so far and I will update later
Thanks again
SDS
@pablob please see my most recent post from this morning
Hi hammerhead8599
How nice, that the kernel-latest installation solved the issue!
I would probably still make a backup of the config files from dom0:/boot/grub2 (maybe just a quick cd /boot/grub2/ ; cp grub.cfg gruc.cfg-working-2026-09-26 in dom0) - that way you can compare options to kernel if the problem should show up again.
To help the next person (with a similar problem) could you mark the “I installed kernel-latest” post as the solution to the problem?
One last word. I want to thank everyone that contributed to this post. I am just a dumb construction worker so I live and learn from mistakes, mine and others. No formal education so this type of assistance is invaluable to me.
I have been using Qubes OS since early version 3 days and love it.
Thank you all again!
SDS