System Related (I think) Keyboard Weirdness

Dell Inspiron laptop running 32 bit Vista.

The other day the keyboard started acting up - not typing certain letters, switching repeatedly from caps to lowercase, sometimes even typing some characters without user input.

Blew some compressed into the keyboard, removed the keyboard, all to no avail. The problem got worse. The 'e' key now refuses to work at all. Ditto for the left shift, the left tab, and the tilde. Meanwhile I can see the blue light indicating 'caps lock', going on and off, with me touching a thing.

So I hooked up another keyboard (USB), and tried that. Perfect! At least all the keys work.

But then I started seeing the caps lock light on the laptop keyboard go on and off again, and I looked at the external keyboard, and, sure enough the caps lock light on that was perfectly synchronized with the laptop.

Meanwhile the keyboard on the Inspiron is now almost totally no-functional. Just a handful of keys now work, all of them on the right side of the keyboard.

I was thinking about just dropping another compatible keyboard into the laptop, but now I'm concerned that there's something more sinister going on.

All of this within the last 24 hours. It was perfect when I went to bed last night.

Put in a new battery

To me sinister means virus etc.
Run a full anti virus scan
Download and run malwarebytes. Run the full scan and be sure to update prior to scanning.
If negative
Go to device manager and check for any yellow markers that may warn of problems
Make sure that you have the most current updates and drivers

Run a check of the system, Run 3 times if errors are found
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66978-system-files-sfc-command.html

If all the above is negative, go back 2 or 3 days before the problem began with System Restore any corruptionwith the system will be removed.

richc46 said:

Put in a new battery

Click to expand...

Don't know if you're referring to a battery to run the laptop or a CMOS battery. 95% of the time the laptop runs with a power cord. And in my relatively limited experience CMOS battery problems usually manifest initially with date/time display errors. I have none.

richc46 said:

To me sinister means virus etc.
Run a full anti virus scan
Download and run malwarebytes. Run the full scan and be sure to update prior to scanning.
If negative

Click to expand...

A current Malwarebytes scan was already run on the laptop last night. No malicious items detected

richc46 said:

Go to device manager and check for any yellow markers that may warn of problems
Make sure that you have the most current updates and drivers

Click to expand...

Also was already done. No red markers. No yellow markers. And "the best driver software for your device is already installed"

richc46 said:

Run a check of the system, Run 3 times if errors are found
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66978-system-files-sfc-command.html

Click to expand...

Ran it once. Absolutely no problems detected

richc46 said:

If all the above is negative, go back 2 or 3 days before the problem began with System Restore any corruptionwith the system will be removed.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I guess I'll give that a try. But my best guess is the the keyboard has essentially gone to that great electronics graveyard in the sky, and the problems with the external keyboard caps lock are due to the inspiron keyboard. I feel pretty sure that if I disconnect that keyboard completely the problems will disappear.

Then I suggest, that you test with a new keyboard and if defective you need to replace it.