possible keyboard interrupt problem..?

Hello,

Been using Win 7/64-bit only for a couple of weeks since picking up a new PC (Acer Aspire m5400) at Christmas.

It was running great out of the box, but in this past week it has started to act up. There are several problems which I hope are all associated.

I had a look at this thread because it seemed to show some of the symptoms that I'm seeing, but that user has a Dell, and the thread was never resolved.

Here's what's wrong:

* constant keyboard interrupt, about every second (for example, if I type within the run/open box, I only get a couple of letters entered before the text is automatically highlighted, so it's subsequently erased as I continue to type)
* screen saver never kicks in
* non-active windows "flash" on the desktop (for example, the chrome browser I'm using is solid blue along the top of the window when active, but when it's no longer in the forefront, it turns grey, as expected. But then will flash between blue and grey repeatedly)
* if I right-click on the desktop, and select 'personalize', it brings up the personalization settings. As I use the middle mouse wheel to scroll down through the themes section, every second, it will jump back up to the top of the window.
* start menu acts really odd -- for example, I click on Start, then All Programs. Once I click on a folder (i.e. Accessories), the subfolder opens briefly, and then the Start menu closes on its own. Same goes if I hit the Start button, and then click on the arrow next to 'shut down' -- nothing happens, the Start menu just closes)

When this first began to happen last week, I did a system restore back several days, which didn't seem to work at first. But then it seemed to fix itself. I know this sounds odd but that's the best way I can explain it. But it's cropped up again, and I'm not sure if I should step back through several more restore points to see if any recent Windows updates have lead to this problem.

Under text services and input languages, my keyboard is listed as:
* US
* Canadian multilingual standard
* Canadian French

Then there's a 2nd section called "Other" and it lists:
* Ink Correction (64 bit only)

As I said, this was working fine out of the box... so I'm stumped! Acer has no specific driver that I can download to see if this is the issue. Also did a full virus scan and nothing has cropped up.

Thanks for any assistance. :)

Brad

Hi there, and thanks for the quick reply. I just figured out the problem and I feel really stupid but for the life of me I don't know what the reason is behind it all.

The fault lies in a thumb drive that I had plugged into a USB port. What tipped me off was when I viewed 'my computer' window, and all the icons next to the 'devices with removable storage' were flashing. As soon as I took out that USB stick, the icons stopped flashing, and all of the symptoms I mentioned above instantly disappeared.

Could the problem lie in the fact that I've rebooted with the thumb drive in place? After replugging in the stick, it works fine, and none of these issues have cropped up again. (But I haven't rebooted with the stick in place to see if the issues resurface.) Although I did noticed that the 'cruizer' software for the drive doesn't start upon rebooting, so perhaps Windows just doesn't know what to do with this thumb drive unless its own software is running.

BTW I still did that scan you suggested, and here's the result:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Windows\system32>sfc /scannow
Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.
Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.
Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.