Keyboard problem - spacebar not working

I have Media Centre installed on a shuttle box here, problem started a few
months back when the keyboard spacebar has stopped working. Easy I said and
swapped out the keyboard with another USB model - SAME problem.
Ok so then I tried a PS2 keyboard in its usual port and same problem with
that. I checked all three keyboards on another XP machine and they worked
fine.
Next I tried completely removing the drivers and reinstalling (Microsoft
standard PS/2 drivers) and still the same.
The ONLY way I could get the spacebar to work is by holding down the SHIFT
key first and then pressing the spacebar and then it would insert a space on
the page - this applies to all three keyboards.
So somewhere along the line this is a s/w problem or a more serious problem
with the hardware but it beats me as to what is causing it. I don`t have any
special keyboard software/ keymappers etc - just plain old Media Centre
2005.
What could be causing this?

Steve

"Steve" <steve@steve.com> wrote in message
news:PoE0f.13341$DO.855@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net...
> I have Media Centre installed on a shuttle box here, problem started a few
> months back when the keyboard spacebar has stopped working. Easy I said
and
> swapped out the keyboard with another USB model - SAME problem.
> Ok so then I tried a PS2 keyboard in its usual port and same problem with
> that. I checked all three keyboards on another XP machine and they worked
> fine.
> Next I tried completely removing the drivers and reinstalling (Microsoft
> standard PS/2 drivers) and still the same.
> The ONLY way I could get the spacebar to work is by holding down the SHIFT
> key first and then pressing the spacebar and then it would insert a space
on
> the page - this applies to all three keyboards.
> So somewhere along the line this is a s/w problem or a more serious
problem
> with the hardware but it beats me as to what is causing it. I don`t have
any
> special keyboard software/ keymappers etc - just plain old Media Centre
> 2005.
> What could be causing this?
>
> Steve
>
>

I would try a different keyboard country code (Control Panel / Regional
Settings).
Anything would do, just as long as it's different from your current code.

Has anyone made any progress on this problem? My Acer C300 Tablet
started doing this recently. I took it back to Acer tech support, but
they tested it with a new HDD and the problem went away. Put my HDD
back in and the problem returned. Logically, one would assume it must
be software issue, not a hardware issue.

There was nothing obvious or apparent that caused this problem to start
happening. I have performed a system rollback, but it made no
difference. Checked the regional settings, and the accessibility
options, but nothing seems odd with those.

Symptoms are the spacebar and enter keys don't work. I can force them
to function by shift-clicking each of them, and they work ok when I do
this.

Any suggestions? I have run a full AV scan (Norton 2005), as well as
several spyware checks (just in case), as well as several registry
checks and tune ups, all to no effect.

The recommendation from Acer was a system restore (full reformat), but
I really don't want to have to do that unless it's an absolute last
resort. Other than this problem the machine is well set up and well
maintained.

Any help would be appreciated...

Chris (who really can't keep typing long posts using shift-spacebar
much longer!!)