Chromebook keyboard disabled for certain users, but not all

[Kim_Nilsson]

Scratching my head, trying to help a colleague, who has two different students, where when they log into their respective Chromebooks the keyboard doesn't work.

Keyboard works fine if the teacher logs in.

Teacher tested removing the students' user profiles from both CBs, to no avail.
As soon as they log back in, the keyboards stop working.

From what I can find, there is no shortcut to disable the physical keyboard.

https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/183101?hl=en

That's also the answer I see when I google the issue. So any suggestions I have found that wants to "reset the hardware" should be irrelevant, since the keyboard works when the teacher logs in.

All users are restricted from installing unknown Chrome extensions, and AFAIK none of the allowed extensions have that feature, so there should not be such a thing blocking the use of the physical keyboard.

Actions like these, for example, should be irrelevant.

1. https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/1059260?hl=en
2. https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/183084?hl=en
3. https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3227606?hl=en

These are also standard actions when any issue occurs.
Where step 1 is always done, without even thinking about it, and step 2 immediately done if step 1 doesn't fix it. Step 3 is rarely done, but should perhaps become our new #2. 🙂

Only the first of the three is user specific. The absolutely most common reason is some corruption of the Chrome user profile. Works great on non-Chrome devices too, as long as you have active sync, of course, or you will lose your bookmarks, passwords and other nice things only existing locally.

I did find a Chrome extension that claims to be able to lock the keyboard.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/keyboard-lock/egchhmakkadlgkamakegnhokjkbkhjkm?hl=en

So, if either student has found the necessary code, and has somehow managed to load that code (I don't know how it can be saved between sessions, but you can always paste any code in Developer Tools (F12) during an active session), then maaaaaybe this could be relevant.

[panderson]

A couple of times we have had students do something when logged into their school account on a home computer and it messed up their Google Profile and the only way that we were able to get it to work right was to reset their profile and change their password (in case they were still logged in on another computer and it was sending whatever was causing the issue).

[Michael_Roop]

Is it possible somehow they either have a bluetooth device (phone or watch) that is interacting with their profile when they are near, or something wearable that is magnetic/emits a signal that is messing it up?  Has the teacher logged the students accounts in themselves and seen the same issue (with the students nowhere around?)

Sorry, just spitballing.

[Kim_Nilsson]

Interesting. Will see if there is any feedback after the local tech does complete wipes.

[panderson · Accepted solution]

Maybe a silly question, but have they had the students log into another Chromebook? If it follows them to a different device, that would definitely point to a User Profile/Extension issue. When we have these problems, we move them to an OU that doesn't load any extensions to see if the problem still exists; if it does, it's the user profile. 

The other thing that we have had to do at least once was change the user's password. We believe that they were logged in on a Windows computer, so even deleting their profile didn't work because the Windows computer kept it active.

I don't think we have ever done it, but I remember it was on our list to create a new user, transfer their data to it, and delete the old user.

[Kim_Nilsson]

Not at all silly, and exactly the response I got from the local person.

When booting into another device, they didn't experience the issue.

So my recommendation was to just wipe the device and put it on the shelf. No response from the staff user since.