« Skype Says Some Users Can Connect Again | Home | 11 steps to buying a domain name that doesn’t suck »
I Need Your Help—Keyboard Ceases to Function
By Larry Hendrick | August 17, 2007
Last week, some of the keys on my laptop quit working … again. Yes, this has happened before, and I have successfully resolved the issues, but this time I haven’t had any success.
History
My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 2100 notebook, that is almost seven years old and I still love it. It’s light (less than 3.0lbs), has decent batter life, and travels well. Yes it’s starting to get beat up a little, but that just adds to its character.
About eighteen months ago, five or six keys just stopped working. D, K, and L were the hardest to work around. I never realized how much I used those keys, until they didn’t work. I removed the keyboard, used canned air to blow out any loose debris and cleaned the connections. I replaced the keyboard and everything worked … for a month.
This problem and process repeated every month or two until six months ago. Almost all the keys stopped working, and nothing I did helped. I went through all my usual practices … nothing. I searched for solutions all over the Internet and there was not anything that fit my particular problem. I even plugged in an external keyboard, and that worked fine. This led me to believe it was hardware related.
Analysis
I decided to think analytically about this. There were only two possibilities; hardware or software. If it was hardware, there are three components; keyboard, motherboard, connectors. If it was software, it had to be drivers.
Since I was leaning toward hardware, I decided I needed keyboard testing software to determine if the keys functioned properly. I located Passmark’s KeyboardTest and downloaded the 30 day trial. I fired up the software, and wouldn’t you know it … everything worked perfectly.
And did until last week. Currently about five keys work, and the rest do not.
But wait, it gets better. Yesterday I did the following:
- I removed the keyboard and used the canned air
- I check the connections
- I tried to fire up the KeyboardTest software, but of course, the trial had expired
- I headed to Dell and downloaded the original keyboard drives and installed
- I rebooted and it all worked perfectly … for about ten minutes
In fact I started writing this article on it to see if all the keys functioned correctly, and they did … then they didn’t. I only have about five keys that work and the rest don’t.
Since the drivers solved the problem for a few minutes, it makes me think the problem is software related, but it could still be the physical keyboard causing the problem. Talk about a bad swinging pendulum. First I think hardware, then software. I’m totally lost on this one.
It just seems wrong to start spending money without a direction to go. Keyboards are $20 on eBay, and to buy the Passmark software is $25.00. I’m cheap enough that I hate to spend $50 without knowing if the fix is even possible.
HELP
Does anyone have any ideas about this? Have you experienced this and resolved the problem. Any tests that might help isolate the problem?
HELP, I need more input. I’m losing what’s left of my mind.
Thanks in advance for any viable suggestions.
Topics: Technology |
August 18th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
That’s a tuffy, Larry. I can see why it is so maddening.
Based on the age of the laptop and what you already did with software, I’d lean towards buying a new keyboard.
August 19th, 2007 at 8:05 am
That’s the decision I came to, also. I caught one on eBay for $.99 + $8.00 shipping, so $8.99 total. I’ll see what happens next week when it arrives.
I just kept coming back to hardware. Over and over … hardware. I’ll let you know how brilliant we both are, in a few days.
August 24th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
[...] week I fretted about the problems I was having with my keyboard. I ran more tests and like reader Dave, came to the conclusion the problem had to [...]