Erratic Keyboard Behaviour

[Andrew Blair]

This morning, after using my laptop without issue last night, the keyboard stopped responding. The same thing had happened a week ago, but by simply resetting the BIOS defaults, the problem went away.

Frustrated, I ended up reinstalling Windows XP, only to find that the keyboard still does not work. However, if I press the keys really, really hard, some keys will respond some of the time. Thinking it was a connection problem, I disassembled the flashing and reseated the keyboard connector. Now, at this point I realized that I had been able to use my keyboard in the BIOS menu the whole time, but not in XP. This is evident because I can enable Caps lock during boot up until the point the windows loading screen comes up. The touchpad does not consistently work either, and usb devices still work, except of course for mice or keyboards! (Unless plugged in bvefore XP boots). It also loads the desktop very slowly.

Additionally, recently the battery meter constantly reads the battery as having 0% power, yet it will run my computer for as long as it ever has.

I'm really confused and rather frustrated. Except for the battery thing and
the keyboard issue a little while ago, there haas been no other warning.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Andrew,
What type of laptop is this? I have heard of Dells that have a known problem with the keyboard.

[Rob2713g]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Andrew,
What type of laptop is this? I have heard of Dells that have a known problem with the keyboard.

My school uses Inspiron 600m and the laptops constantly have login issues - we have to keep pressing the enter button until it lets us type in our password.
Dell is usually aware of these glitches so you may want to try calling them. Use Get Human to contact them quickly.
Also try the computer with the charger plugged in, which helps sometimes.

Good Luck!

[Andrew Blair]

Al, its a cheap Acer Aspire 3003, but I've had it for over a year with no problems, which is frustrating. Oddly ebough, it has completely come back, usb support, keyboard, touchpad- everything, but I can't figure out why. I restarted the thing, it didn't work for at least 5 minutes of trying, so I let it sit, on. I come back, 10 minutes later, and it works like a charm. I'm beginning to wonder if there's a connection that expands into place when it warms up...

[Schnabel]

Try contacting Acer.
COUGH MACS ALWAYS WORK COUGH

[Andrew Blair]

Update-

It's died yet again. Here's some more background info:

1. Before the first trouble started showing up, I used Ccleaner to delete registry issues. Almost all were with Inventor, but I saw no problems with any program after the clean.

2. I disabled all startup programs about a day before the issues started. Again, no problem between at least one reboot.

3. After trying to restart the computer from hibernation, it locked and I restarted manually. And thats when the problems started.

By the way, the keyboard works fine in BIOS, but like I said, it dies once XP starts. The frustrating part is that it kinda works sometimes if you hold a key in for a long time. I even typed "Internet Explorer" once! And then it went back to not working. I've tried system restore, uninstalling the drivers-even installing thrid party drivers. No luck. Software is officially EVIL...

[Al Skierkiewicz]

OK,
There is possibly a temp problem but the fact that it came back after several minutes of on time could indicate that or that the keyboard driver for XP is just loading last. While your computer is loading up, all kinds of things are taking place in their own sweet time. Since you have reloaded XP there is no chance to back up to a previous known good configuration. There is a possibility that the ACER keyboard driver has become corrupt. Once XP is open start a DOS session and see if the keyboard is working. Check every key. If that passes the test then the problem is with XP and you can check there site (on somebody elses computer) to get an idea or download the latest driver for your laptop.
Did you get any restore disks with the laptop? Did you use these to reload XP or a stand alone copy of XP?

[TubaMorg]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

OK,
There is possibly a temp problem but the fact that it came back after several minutes of on time could indicate that or that the keyboard driver for XP is just loading last. While your computer is loading up, all kinds of things are taking place in their own sweet time. Since you have reloaded XP there is no chance to back up to a previous known good configuration. There is a possibility that the ACER keyboard driver has become corrupt. Once XP is open start a DOS session and see if the keyboard is working. Check every key. If that passes the test then the problem is with XP and you can check there site (on somebody elses computer) to get an idea or download the latest driver for your laptop.
Did you get any restore disks with the laptop? Did you use these to reload XP or a stand alone copy of XP?

As an adendum to the above suggestions, reboot to SAFE mode and put it to boot to the DOS prompt so that none of the windows environment interferes with the test.

[Andrew Blair]

Thank heavens for safe mode. I had forgotten about it, and as soon as I got home, that's what I did. The keyboard worked fine in XP safe mode, so I knew it was a problem with the drivers. I unstalled them from safe mode, let them reinstall in regular windows, and I haven't had a problem through a re-boot. So good so far...

What I wonder is, why did re-installing the drivers through the regular environment fail, while uninstalling them in Safe mode worked? There must be some kind of log of settings it loads in regular windows, and theres a bad keyboard one somewhere.

Additionally, my hard-drive is partitioned, but the reinstall of XP did not wipe the second half. I wonder if something bad might still be on there? Thanks for the help!

[Al Skierkiewicz]

If you load garbage the first time it is there for eternity. I know there are some strange things that Windows does/has/doesn't do. One of the prices we pay for a high level operating system that is designed to work with a couple of million combinations of hardware and software.