Scroll lock turns on by itself

[asliae]

To turn the scroll lock On or Off on my laptop, I have to press Function +
Num Lk. There have been times when I have not even been typing and I will
still see the indicator turn on by itself.

This has been an on-going issue for many months. It's very frustrating,
particularly when working in Excel. Scroll lock does not come on
automatically when I boot up the PC; however, after I have been working on
the computer for a while it will start turning on by itself. There have been
times when it would come On, I would turn it Off, and then it would turn back
on within 30-45 seconds. It's not usually that quick, but it does happen
frequently. This problem is also not limited to my laptop, but frequently
occurs on other Dell D620's in our group.

How can I make sure that the Scroll Lock feature only turns on when I
actually push the buttons?

Alternately, is there a way to disable the Scroll Lock feature within the
OS? BIOS is password protected and I do not have access to it, so I'm
looking for OS options.

Thank you.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

I suggest setting it to warn you that it happened.

Control Panel/Accessibility options/
In the Sound tab click to check the Use SoundSentry checkbox.
Click the Settings button and select Flash active window in the Warning for
windowed programs drop-down menu.
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Mark L. Ferguson

..

 

[asliae]

Thanks, but I usually catch it pretty quickly because I see the light on the
keyboard turn on. And if I'm working in Excel, then I know immediately
because it affects how I move between cells.

This happens dozens of times a day, and I really want to find a way to stop
it from happening. At one point I had even written a script that would turn
off the Scroll Lock, and then I scheduled it to run every three minutes. But
I don't like having an extra program running in the background just to shut
this off. There must be a way to address this in the OS.

Thanks.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Well, there is a way. Windows is nothing but a fancy 'Message Pump' in a
while loop. The message to turn on the scroll lock could be 'hooked' to
return nothing with a small windows TSR. Anyone with Visual Studio could
write one with the Foundation Classes in minutes. Find a developer newsgroup
and ask for one. (I'm 'retired' from all that. My old version of V.S.
probably wouldn't even install in Vista.)

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