Keyboard and mouse dead in Recovery Environment

October’s update broke USB keyboard and mouse support in the Windows Recovery Environment. If your PC had a problem and booted into WinRE, you’d see the recovery options on screen — and be completely unable to interact with them. No keyboard, no mouse, no way to select “Troubleshoot” or “Reset this PC” or anything at all. Just a recovery screen you can look at but not touch, like a museum exhibit of a functional operating system. Microsoft rushed out an emergency fix in six days, which is fast for them but an eternity when you’re staring at an unusable recovery screen.