Shifting Keyboard Letters

[Guest]

I'm a poor typist (hunt and peck), but try hard to work quickly. This
occasionally results in my hitting keys on my laptop (I sense in the lower
left corner, but I may be wrong) that cause most of my keyboard keys to
start registering different letters on screen from those on the keys. So,
far, I have not been able to determine if I am simply moving to another
keyboard system from the standard system in regular use.

Anyway, I have to re-boot my laptop to correct the situation and when I do,
the keyboard is back to normal (i.e. the keys I hit are the same as the
letters that appear on the screen).

Unfortunately, I still cannot figure out what I've done! I know that I'm not
hitting keys that activate the numeric numbers that are part of the keyboard
on a laptop. That's a process that I'm familiar with and know how to escape.

Has anyone a suggestion as to what I might be doing (e.g. hitting a key
combination by mistake that sets the sytem into another whole setup for the
keys?).

Equally important, does anyone know how to correct this situation without
re-booting the computer.

Thanks.

 

[Pennywise]

I'm a poor typist (hunt and peck), but try hard to work quickly. This
occasionally results in my hitting keys on my laptop (I sense in the lower
left corner, but I may be wrong) that cause most of my keyboard keys to
start registering different letters on screen from those on the keys. So,
far, I have not been able to determine if I am simply moving to another
keyboard system from the standard system in regular use.

Writes like your hitting your FUN (Function) Key.

Most are in blue lettering - this key changes the keys to what is in
blue on the other keys, numbers instead of letters and the F keys (top
row) into turning up/down/off sound and other Features of your laptop.

 

[Pennywise]

Oh ya, press the key again, it's a toggle.

 

[Guest]

Thanks 'Pennywise'. I was under the impression that I had to be hitting the
Fn key and another key with blue lettering. Unfortuanately, so far, I don't
seem to be doing that, and can't duplicate it. But, since this 'key shift'
has happened several times now, I'll wait until I do it again (whatever it is
that I'm doing!) and see what happens by simply toggling the Fn key.

 

[Chuck]

Some keyboards have little oddities, such as if you hit two keys, you get a
different keycode than either one of the keys. It may be in place of a
correct keycode or even a third keycode. What happens as a result can be
really bizarre, such as shifting the keyboard to a different key layout or
even generate a valid windows control sequence.

We had one user some years ago that repeatedly managed to hit two fairly
critical key at the same time. The result activated one of the user
"accessibility" features in windows, causing the screen character size to
increase by a very large amount. Another user would evidently hit keys
occasionally that changed the mode of the keyboard controller chip to a
multi-shift (far east) mode.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Chuck. What you are describing in general could well be what is
happening with me, as I often hit more than one key. Perhaps, on occasion, I
am hitting two that cause the keycode to jump.

Any solutions to suggest, short of re-booting?
Thanks.