HomeThe keyboard on my laptop works at boot to type HD password. The keyboard will not work after that. The function key appears to be working. I can mess with screen size and some other function Keys. Some Keys “work”. H Key types “replace”. m and J types enter Key. f types “find”. The space bar and enter Keys work in notepad but only in notepad. m works for enter Key everywhere else. Onscreen Keyboard produces same characters. I am assuming that somehow the keyboard settings changed or shut off the keyboard using the function keys. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
If the keyboard works at boot but not after that it is possible that you have a software related problem. You can test the keyboard if you boot the laptop from a Knoppix CD – live Linux CD (the download is free), open up a text editor and test the keyboard in there. If the keyboard is working fine in Linux, there is nothing wrong with hardware.
Check Regional and Language Settings in Control panel, look for any strange settings. Make sure everything is set to English USA.
As a last resort back up all personal files from the hard drive and re-image the hard drive back to factory defaults with the recovery disk. Reinstalling the operating system should fix any software related issues.
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March 13th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Hello again. I did reinstall windows but I still have the same problem. I am pretty sure it is a software problem now because I had previously downloaded My T Touch virtual keyboard and when I open and close this program my keyboard works, but when I close windows I lose the settings and have to open this program everytime I turn on my laptop. Can you tell me how to fix this? By the way I do not have the recovery disk, just a copy of windows, which seems to leave some of my old settings on the freshly installed windows even though I reformatted my harddisk. Thanks again for you time!
March 13th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Christine,
It shouldn’t be this way. When you reinstalling the operating system from scratch it erases all old settings. If you have software related issue reinstalling Windows should fix it. Make sure to reinstall the whole operating system and not just replace system files or repair them.
Boot from the Windows CD, delete all partitions and install Windows from scratch.
March 15th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Hi again! I have installed windows a few times today. The problem is that when windows starts to install, I lose the keyboard settings and the only keys that work are c v and m works for enter. So I keep pushing the keys and when it comes time to push the key to delete the partition I dont think any of my keys will work. The esc key and f8 keys work with no problem. Is there another way to reinstall the operating system from scratch?