Clevo NH55AFW Keyboard bluescreen after windows 11 update

[Ideafix]

Greetings everyone,

 

I have a Clevo NH55AFW with a Ryzen 9 3900 desktop CPU and a RTX 2070, which has worked flawlessly for these past 3 years.

 

Recently, after a large windows 11 22H2 update, it has started to crash with bluescreen around 2-3 times a day.

 

WinDbg bugcheck analysis always points to kbdclass.sys with the error DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

 

I've read that this might be connected to CCC or the FN buttons software, but unistalling both didin't make a difference.

 

A clean install of windows 11 and Clevo software didn't help either. The same error occurs a few times a day.

 

Installing different versions of CCC (older and newer) made no difference.

 

Does anyone have any experience with similar issues?

 

Could this be a keyboard hardware issue?

 

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[Ideafix]

I have, in the meantime, solved this problem and I haven't had a blue screen in a long time.

 

I went though a few forums and came to realize that many other owners of Clevo laptops (or laptops based on Clevo hardware) had the same issue, especially on AMD/Ryzen architecture, and eventually found one thread with a solution that worked for me any many opther people.

 

For future reference, I leave below what has worked:

 

The problem is caused by HKKbdFltr.sys, a keyboard filter driver, which is installed together with CCC and FN Hotkey software. Windows update now also automatically installs this Clevo software and it causes the same problem. It makes no difference if you install this directly from Clevo or through Windows Update.

 

HKKbdFltr.sys sends invalid data to kbdclass.sys, which causes the DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error and respective blue screen.

 

There is no new Clevo software / drivers for my laptop (most recent is from 2020), so the solution implies completely removing all Clevo software from your system and then remove all registry entries that contain HKKbdFltr.sys.

 

If you remove the software, but leave the registry keys, the blue screen will continue to happen.

 

Important: In registry keys where HKKbdFltr.sys appears side by side with other driver files, like kbdclass.sys, remove only the entries specific to HKKbdFltr.sys, not the entire key.

 

If it is allowed in this forum, I can leave a link to the original post from another forum where this solution was found.