Another computer question: keyboard locked up

[GURUving]

on a co-worker. She couldn't use her keyboard at all, only the mouse. I ran spybot, ad-aware and Norton AV - nothing. I did a disk clean up. I searched the installed programs. Nothing. I looked at the hardware info, and it looked to me as though the computer wasn't recognizing there was even a keyboard hooked up. I tried reinstalling, but it did nothing. I eventually just did a system restore to last Thursday, and everything started working fine.

Any ideas on why this would happen?

Thanks.

[notadmblnd]

1. Check the cable?

[GURUving]

2. I checked it first thing, and the keyboard would light up

then nothing.

Also, doing the system restore fixed it.

[ParanoidPat]

3. The hidden 'key logger' log file ran out of room.....

......:shrug: :evilgrin:

Could it have been a stuck key? I've seen that a couple of times. :)

[GURUving]

6. Not a stuck key - almost new computer

those hidden key logger must be evil bastards. They can hide as good as Osama, apparently! :)

[niceypoo]

4. Keyboard

You have to turn it off first THEN plug it back in....then turn PC on

[GURUving]

5. Thanks. I've never had that happen before

any idea why? Just a strange occurrence? It's a Compaq, and I'm not familiar with their quality at all.

Also, at times, it gives an error message on boot up, and won't start Windows. She turns it off, turns it back on, and it's okay.

[necso]

7. Many possibilites.

You may have fixed the problem with the restore, or it may have been coincidence. I just had a keyboard go bad, it never registered bad at boot, and would fail intermittently. Then it would work fine for a while.

If not a keyboard/cable problem (sometimes the cable hangs up on the case), could be any number of system problems, ranging from flaky MBD to failing HD to bad memory to just poor installation of chips/cables, some screwup in HW/SW config etc, etc.

Or could have been just a glitch, the odd bit error somewhere that the restore fixed.

What were the bootup error messages?

Being new is not an absolute protection against problems. Compaq used to be good, but it is so competitive that everybody cuts corners.

I have also seen weird things happen when mouse/keyboard cables were reversed.

[GURUving]

8. What were the bootup error messages?

Sorry, can't remember exactly, but it told her to hit any key to continue. When she did, the same error would pop up until she just shut it down and restarted.

[necso]

9. Try these.

I know a couple of these sound silly... but if problems continue:

1) Check that mouse/kybd cables are in their right places and are not hung up on the case.
2) When you are leaving for the day, boot into safe mode and run the thorough disk test.
3) Try replacing the kybd with another one.
4) Run msconfig and eliminate junk in the "startup" files.
5) Try running in a safe mode and see if the problem goes away.
6) Run the builtin check on system file integrity (useless largely).
7) Run a good long memory test.

Keep track of results and any error messages.