Windows 10 safe mode

Had a very odd problem with a Dell OptiPlex 7440 All in one.  The keyboard and mouse stopped working.  But when you go into the bios they work fine.  I found a post in the Dell forums indicating it might be because of the power management settings in device manager for the USB Root Hub.  That sounds like a plan, so I try to boot while hitting F8 but I can never seem to get it into safe mode.  Apparently Microsoft is aware of this.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2012/05/22/designing-for-pcs-that-boot-faster-than-ever-before/

I guess you need to interrupt the boot sequence 3 times to force windows recovery environment that allows you to get into safe mode.  I just pulled power 3 times and it worked but safe mode still didn’t give me keyboard and mouse control.  So I used RDP to get access to the box and found the USB controller driver was bad in device manager.  After removing it and scanning for hardware changes it worked again.  I still unchecked the box in properties that says, “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” just to be safe.