[kerelybonto]

I think my five-year-old laptop's finally gone completely bonkers. The keyboard is behaving very oddly: when I type either "M" or "L", pressing only one of the buttons, not both simultaneously, it outputs "LM"; when I hit "J" or ".", it writes ".J"; when I press "U" or "K", it gives "KU". I think this also happens for a few other keys.

If I hold down any of these funky keys, there's the same sort of strangeness. For example, holding down either the "K" or "U" keys gives "KUUUUUUUUUUUUU"; the same sort of thing with the others.

So of course I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers. No dice. The odd thing is that this happens when using all of the various virtual keyboards and languages I have installed. So the same strange thing happens when using both the "U.S." and "U.S. - International" keyboards for the English language, and also when typing in Russian (the same sort of error but with the doubled-up Cyrillic letters that correspond to the messed-up keys).

So it seems to me that it must be some sort of hardware error with the laptop's keyboard. Has anyone ever had something like this happen? Any ideas on resolving it?

Thanks much.

Eric

 

[trains are bad]

I had a chocolate chip stuck under my "L" key once

(which is actually the "P" key because I type Dvorak)

 

[Cjattwood]

Wow, you use Dvorak? I started re-learning everything required to use it once, but then gave up after I realised I didn't have the patience

 

[kerelybonto]

I'm fairly sure I don't have a chocolate chip stuck under my "L" key, which is really my "L" key because I type QWERTY. ...

Eric

 

[marvin]

If you are competent with computers, open up your laptop, and remove your keyboard. It's probably connected to the motherboard by some sort of ribbon cable. Disconnect it, clean the contacts, reconnect.

If that doesn't fix it, then you can try calling up the manufacturer and get a replacement. If the keyboard wiring is broken (most likely problem), this will fix it. If there's a short on the motherboard, this won't do anything.

 

[trains are bad]

Quote:

Wow, you use Dvorak? I started re-learning everything required to use it once, but then gave up after I realised I didn't have the patience

I've been on it for about two years now, all my personal machines. I don't type at lightning speed, but it is very comfortable to type on. XP lets you leave a language bar on the taskbar so that normal people can use your computer.

However I don't use it, because using a regularly-labeled QWERTY keyboard, set up to type DVORAK, acts as a kind of hardware-level encryption that keeps my roomate off my computers.

 

[Canon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerelybonto The odd thing is that this happens when using all of the various virtual keyboards and languages I have installed.

The key words here... It sounds like a possible software problem if your saying a vitual keyboard (i'm assuming you mean click a key on the scren?).

If you want to know for sure go grab a livecd distro of linux such a Knopix, start that up and see if your keyboard works. Alternatively you could find a bootdisk or something and just get to a DOS prompt etc. so you can test those keys and see if they behaves erratically there. If they work fine then I guess you know what you have to do. If they don't then maybe there's something wrong with the hardware.

I'd rule that out before I ripped appart the machine.