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Soulblood33x
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19 Jul 2012, 9:16 pm

My computer keyboard has a really strange problem. Sometimes, for some strange reason, it will stop typing in letters when I'm typing and use numbers instead. Is there a way to fix this? I'm guessing a virus, but I'm still not sure...



Soulblood33x
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19 Jul 2012, 9:17 pm

By the way, I should probably say that this particular computer runs Windows 7, if that helps...



questor
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20 Jul 2012, 12:16 am

I am not a computer geek, but I've read up on some of these issues. It could be a virus, or dirt inside, or perhaps some liquid got in there. Look into all of these problems.

At one temp job I worked, another employee spilled some of his morning coffee on his keyboard. It worked okay for a little while, but then started typing gibberish on the screen. He had to have the supply department bring him a new keyboard.

I have heard it is possible to recover from a liquid spill on a keyboard. It needs to be unplugged from everything, including the electricity supply. Then it needs to be disassembled and thoroughly cleaned. If the liquid was sticky, you may even have to use water (on a Q-tip) to clean off the stickiness. Clean all of the contaminated parts. Then use a blow dryer on the parts, but on low force,--you don't want the smaller parts blowing all over. Make sure it is thoroughly dry. It may be best to wait a day after blow drying and reassembling the keyboard, before trying to use it, to make sure it is dry. I've heard that this sometimes restores the keyboard to usability.



PTSmorrow
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20 Jul 2012, 2:51 am

Similar problem here (XP,) first it was the arrow keys, now it's mainly the "m," sometimes "c," and "v" that simply don't work. Removed the keys and cleaned it, but to no avail. The only resolution was to unplug the keyboard before shutting down the computer, for any unknown reason after practicing this 3 or 4 times it worked again, so most probably it was a virus.



Soulblood33x
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20 Jul 2012, 6:05 pm

I'm fairly sure it's a virus myself. I doubt it's dirt because, instead of typing in gibberish, it would cycle the numbers 0-9.
So if I typed in "ABCDEFGHIJ"
I would get "0123456789" and then it repeats.



mglosenger
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20 Jul 2012, 6:08 pm

It's possible it is some sort of strange virus, but I think it's more likely the keyboard is simply going bad. This can happen without pouring anything into it. It's also possible your motherboard is going bad, but that seems like the least likely explanation.

Try plugging in a different keyboard and see what happens. If it still does the weird gibberish, it could be a virus. A very strange one.. I've never heard of a virus that does that.



netspectre223
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21 Jul 2012, 4:50 am

A few things come to mind, but first:

Are you a Comcast subscriber, by any chance? The anti-keylogging portion of their Constant Guard software has been known to cause issues such as those you're describing.



Soulblood33x
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21 Jul 2012, 9:24 am

netspectre223 wrote:
A few things come to mind, but first:

Are you a Comcast subscriber, by any chance? The anti-keylogging portion of their Constant Guard software has been known to cause issues such as those you're describing.


As a matter of fact, yes I am! That's probably doing it then. I'll look into disabling that when I get a chance.



Madbones
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23 Jul 2012, 12:25 pm

I dont suppose it would be a Microsoft Sidewinder gaming keyboard would it?
Mine did that.....


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