Maybe you guys can help me out. My laptop has some really odd shit going on with it. It will start out working fine, but eventually the 'shift' function will turn itself on. This isn't sticky keys, and caps lock is not on. I will be typing, and all of a sudden everything will act as though I am constantly hitting shift, which I'm not. I lose all of my number capabilities, everytime I click on a page in my web browser, it will open a new session, and any punctuation buttons are rendered temporarily useless, until it stops. I've never spilled anything on it at all, and it will just do this at random. Restarting the computer is just a temporary fix until it decides to do it again. Here's the general info on it. Computer: Compaq Presario V5000 (it's about 3 years old now) Operating system: Windows XP home Hard Drive: 60 Gig
I haven't yet, but I'm sure if its an issue with windows. It's been narrowed down to keyboard issues, but we don't know if it's the motherboard, or just the keyboard itself. At least that's what my borother believes it is, and he's an HP certified tech.
LiveCD? I've never heard of that. When I bought my computer, because XP was already preloaded, I never got a system recovery disk with it. I was thinking about that, but I'd have to find a USB keyboard first. our desktop computer has the standard plug, not the usb. I tried it once with a keyboard that was a mac keyboard, but it didn't seem to fix anything.
See, there's your problem. Computers age a lot faster than people. My computer's almost a year old, and it's prone to overheating. And I think something in it's causing my chargers to short out, as I'm on my 2nd charger, and I have to mess around a bit before the computer will acknowledge it's on the charger. All I can say is to get another laptop. If you don't want one with Vista, try looking for one with XP. Although I don't know where you can find one of those.
It's not just Sticky Keys that can do this problem, there's Filter Keys that can cause this. Try disabling that (if it IS enabled)
A LiveCD is simply, a Linux distro that you can use without installing. For example, you could go & download Ubuntu, burn it onto a CD. Load it up (make sure your CD drive is set to boot before the HDD) & you'll see a screen, just click the first option & you'll see a desktop you can use. It's very useful.
I can't really see it as being much more than a keyboard issue. Unfortunately, for a laptop it's a lot harder to replace a keyboard. I don't think it's a serious hardware failure and it's almost certainly not an error in windows, but it might be a stuck key or two on the keyboard. As noted above, it's possible that sticky or filter keys is enabled. Sometimes I hold down the shift key before I type a letter, which is what enables it -- holding down the shift key. That might cause the issue. If there's a way to disable the laptop's built-in keyboard to test with only a USB keyboard on, that could eliminate a few possibilities, though. Still, if it doesn't happen immediately when starting the computer, I'd bet that you've set one of the key filter things on.
One year old and it's prone to overheating? Huh, fail - try getting a new fan. Also, many old computers have over a decade and still work, so you're basically saying the hardware quality has only downgraded all these years... Well, I can't say that's false =[
Does the Key filter turn itself off autmatically at times then? I'll probably have to take it in. If it is the keyboard, then it might not actually be too hard. My board isn't actually part of the casing, it's seperate from it. I'll have to save up money then...being a part time worker sucks...I can't even move out at the wages that I get... It seems like every computer that we have owned has some odd factor about it. Our old gateway desktop used to turn itself on.
Shit, I have a laptop that was prone to overheating from playing SOLITAIRE for 20 minutes. Ah, the craptop... the company that makes it (Time, those of you in the UK) has since gone bust. I'm not surprised in the slightest.