This is just weird - laptop keyboard

Aug 09, 2020 20 Replies

My old, little used laptop has just installed a series of Win10 updates, now fully up to date, since when my keyboard has had problem generating a question mark.



Question mark is on the shifted forward slash key - ////. Either of the shift keys work fine with all the other keys to produce the caps etc., but pressing the left shift key + ? may require as many as 10 presses to produce a question mark. Right shift key + ? works every time.


I used to get somethning like that.... the keyboard would switch to usa or wagga wagg etc...pain...I hate computers

I'd try uninstalling it and allowing it to reinstall.

Several times, I have found that a W10 update has applied OK but somewhere between hours and days later something stops working - even if the update r equired a restart, or I have restarted anyway, sometimes several times. Usu ally a mouse. Typically, I remove and reinstall and all is well for many mo nths.

Do you have a visual indication of shift having been pressed? Is that worki ng as usual? Could you have some dust under the key?

I'd try uninstalling win10 & never letting it install again. Going linux has solved so many unnecessary problems. Never regretted it for one moment.

NT

I wouldn't say I've regretted it. But running linux isn't zero effort.

Never update, maybe one day they will get it right.

polygonum_on_google laid this down on his screen :

Shift works perfectly with all the other keys, as does the / so not that and the ? eventually appears after several tries.

Does it do anything different if you boot into the BIOS settings (taking care of course not to save changes)?

What behaviour do you see using sticky keys?

If you turn stick keys on and then press shift, it should beep, followed by /?, what happens.

It might be that the physical keyboard is dodgy and it currently manifests on the /? key, but that things will become clearer with time (in a bad way). If you still get ? with a sticky shift it would help eliminate a hardware problem.

Also, do you get the same behaviour if you plug a keyboard in?

It's possible you've got the US keyboard setting enabled. Do you see "ENG" in the notification at the right end of the taskbar?

slash and question-mark are the same on UK and US keyboard layouts.

You've got me banged to rights, officer.

Laptop keyboards tend to be non-standard. Do they need a driver/key map?

Pancho brought next idea :

No difference.

It seems the once repeated pressing of leftshift + / has produced one ? it will then produce as many as I want ???????????, never misses. Using rightshift + / always produces one, but doing that makes no difference to the problem with the leftshift one.

DOS (command prompt) exibits exactly the same problem.

I'm away in the caravan, I only have the laptop with me..

???????££££££??????

Out of curiosity, I have just tried swapping to the US keyboad option. It will not produce a ? at all via the leftshift + /, but still does with rightshift + /

And a PITA if your clients use MS

Laptop keyboards have always been flaky. Maybe the laptop has the ability to remap the different shifts and now the update has screwed it. Brian

I guess from what he said that the other shift related keys will work fine. Brian

That is fine as long as he has no windows only requirements though. Brian

I suspect then that its the hook into the keyboard scanning that the laptop maker uses that is giving issues. Many have the FN key and in order to do all the mapping and reassigning of function keys they either have a special driver or sometimes an actual bios extension to make it work. Might be worth asking the laptop vendor about either a bios update or a driver update. Brian

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