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Erratic keyboard behavior

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by goodoffb

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One of our staff is having problems with his keyboard. In the middle of an operation (Outlook, Word, Excel) multiple areas start to be highlighted. In Excel, as he moves to each cell, all cells moved to become highlighted. In Word, whole paragraphs are highlighted. If you type anything, the remainder of the text is erased. If you right click, some of the highlight is turned off, but again highlights when you move the arrow keys to the next word. The same is true of Outlook. Also, it seems that cap locks works opposite of how it should; when turned on, all is lower case; when off, all is upper case. I went to the control panel to check settings. When I click on 'keyboard', all control panels from Accessibility Options through Keyboard were highlighted and tried to open. I checked the 'sticky' setting in Accessibility, and it is turned off. It seems like the 'shift key' may be stuck. But he has a laptop with an attached keyboard. Both keyboards act the same. The problem seems to go away without any logical sequence. Any help would be appreciated.

4 replies

by chris910

I have run into a similar problem before. Most often you will see this when the user is using the laptop keyboard and dragging their thumbs across the touch pad as they type. I have also seen it happen with the cover closed in a docking station where vibration caused a similar response.

by oh smeg

If it is there is a stuck key on the Keyboard which is causing the problem actually it could be the NB Keyboard which has failed and when you use an external Keyboard it is affected.

Try disabling the NB's Keyboard and see if the problem persists or if you are unable to do that test the NB with a Live Linux for Keyboard Operation. You can use a Live Linux off a CD without affecting the Windows Install and it will rule out any software issues that may be occurring.

Of course if the Keyboard controller is dieing there is only one solution and that is to replace the NB. You could use the Ultimate Boot Cd to test the Hardware as well but currently I don't know of any software that is capable of testing the Keyboard Interface on the M'Board.

You can download the Ultimate Boot CD free from here

http://tinyurl.com/3jnpy

You can download a Live Linux Free through this site

http://tinyurl.com/23nmq

I've had to replace a couple of Compaq's this week because the Keyboard Interface has failed if that is any help.

Col

by goodoffb

Thanks for the clues. He is able to 'turn off' the problem with shift-F3. I will detach or disable the next time it happens.

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