Bizarre! Keyboard events

[Rob]

My friend's got a Toshiba Satellite laptop. Windows XP home.

At some point when using the laptop, keyboard events start getting fired
into Windows. The sequence seems to be <down> <right> <delete> repeating
forever. Only a reboot will stop it. Obviously this makes the system totally
unusable - it's enough of a problem to get it to reboot cleanly without
deleting half the contents of the desktop!

This behaviour seems like a virus, but I guess it could be some sort of
hardware problem.. Though I haven't known a virus to make itself known so
annoyingly and obviously in years.

I have downloaded the latest Norton definitions and a full scan finds
nothing. The latest Stinger also finds nothing. Have also tried the web
based Housecall and Panda scans. Nothing found. No odd-looking processes are
running in taskmgr.

One thing that seems like a pattern though - the first thing I did was try
to back up all her documents to a CD-R. Nero complained that 2 differently
DOS-named files had the same Joliet name. When I went through the wizard to
start again (I was going to switch off Joliet support) the odd behaviour
started. This happened the first 2 times. The 3rd time was 5 minutes after I
left (of course) so I'm not sure what triggered it that time. It wasn't Nero
that time though.



Does anyone know what this could be? She's going nuts! And I can't find
details of anything like it on the web.


Yours hopefully,

RL.

 

[Botchka]

Does your friend have Microsoft Office XP installed? If so, there is a
speech recognition tool that has known to cause problems like you suggest.

 

[Joep]

I have Toshiba, Although not the exact symptoms as you describe it did also
show weird keyboard related issues. Keys would swap, or would behave like
ALT - Key was pressed. This Toshiba came with it's own keyboard config tool
for defining actions connected to different keys and key combinations. I
always suspected this utility / driver had something to do with it. It never
showed right after starting Windows, it only appeared after the PC was
running for a while, and not always.

 

[kurt wismer]

My friend's got a Toshiba Satellite laptop. Windows XP home.

At some point when using the laptop, keyboard events start getting fired
into Windows. The sequence seems to be <down> <right> <delete> repeating
forever. Only a reboot will stop it. Obviously this makes the system totally
unusable - it's enough of a problem to get it to reboot cleanly without
deleting half the contents of the desktop!

This behaviour seems like a virus, but I guess it could be some sort of
hardware problem..

try that the other way around...

Though I haven't known a virus to make itself known so
annoyingly and obviously in years.

which is why you should try that the other way around...

I have downloaded the latest Norton definitions and a full scan finds
nothing. The latest Stinger also finds nothing. Have also tried the web
based Housecall and Panda scans. Nothing found. No odd-looking processes are
running in taskmgr.

more evidence that it's not a software problem...

[snip]

Does anyone know what this could be? She's going nuts! And I can't find
details of anything like it on the web.

does the laptop have a ps2 receptical that you can plug an external
keyboard into? it's been my experience (though by no means is my
experience in this particular instance extensive) that plugging an
external ps2 device into a laptop will disable the onboard equivalent
(ie. a ps2 mouse would disable the touch pad)...

the point of the exercise is to basically try a different keyboard,
which becomes harder to do with a laptop but hopefully possible with
the above info - test it out, of course, if the built in keyboard still
responds after an external ps2 keyboard is plugged in then the only
thing i can suggest is to take it in for servicing and tell them you
suspect a hardware problem with the keyboard...

 

[Rob]

Thanks, I'll look for something like that.

I have Toshiba, Although not the exact symptoms as you describe it did also
show weird keyboard related issues. Keys would swap, or would behave like
ALT - Key was pressed. This Toshiba came with it's own keyboard config tool
for defining actions connected to different keys and key combinations. I
always suspected this utility / driver had something to do with it. It never
showed right after starting Windows, it only appeared after the PC was
running for a while, and not always.

 

[Rob]

Ta for the advice. Will try external keyboard. Kind of defeats the object of
having a laptop though

My friend's got a Toshiba Satellite laptop. Windows XP home.

At some point when using the laptop, keyboard events start getting fired
into Windows. The sequence seems to be <down> <right> <delete> repeating
forever. Only a reboot will stop it. Obviously this makes the system totally
unusable - it's enough of a problem to get it to reboot cleanly without
deleting half the contents of the desktop!

This behaviour seems like a virus, but I guess it could be some sort of
hardware problem..

try that the other way around...

Though I haven't known a virus to make itself known so
annoyingly and obviously in years.

which is why you should try that the other way around...

I have downloaded the latest Norton definitions and a full scan finds
nothing. The latest Stinger also finds nothing. Have also tried the web
based Housecall and Panda scans. Nothing found. No odd-looking processes are
running in taskmgr.

more evidence that it's not a software problem...

[snip]

Does anyone know what this could be? She's going nuts! And I can't find
details of anything like it on the web.

does the laptop have a ps2 receptical that you can plug an external
keyboard into? it's been my experience (though by no means is my
experience in this particular instance extensive) that plugging an
external ps2 device into a laptop will disable the onboard equivalent
(ie. a ps2 mouse would disable the touch pad)...

the point of the exercise is to basically try a different keyboard,
which becomes harder to do with a laptop but hopefully possible with
the above info - test it out, of course, if the built in keyboard still
responds after an external ps2 keyboard is plugged in then the only
thing i can suggest is to take it in for servicing and tell them you
suspect a hardware problem with the keyboard...
--
"hungry people don't stay hungry for long
they get hope from fire and smoke as the weak grow strong
hungry people don't stay hungry for long
they get hope from fire and smoke as they reach for the dawn"

 

[kurt wismer]

Ta for the advice. Will try external keyboard. Kind of defeats the object of
having a laptop though

it's just to diagnose the possibility of a hardware fault in the one
built in... if that does turn out to be the problem then obviously the
ideal solution would be to have the built in one repaired/replaced...