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#1
Mystery number-key fault that won't reveal it's cause
I'm new here so Hi to everyone from Sunny Devon I hope to find a bit of help here so enrolled to give readers my puzzle. I've been computing since Commodore 64 in 1983 and before that Sinclair would you believe. Even done Email in DOS back in the days of Demon Internet. So what's my trouble?
I have a really strange fault on a new (under warranty) Acer Travel Mate laptop running Windows 7 Pro 64bit
This weird keyboard fault probably has nothing to do with the keys. I had best explain as this isn't easy to clearly describe. Acer themselves haven't cured it. They tried but were way off target.
The number pad on the right side started to fail to show number 4 and 9 in any input but all other 14 keys worked fine. This messes up ascii codes when I want to type say Alt+148 to get ö symbol etc. Well I suspected the keys might be sticking except when I got the 4 to start printing again by fiddling around with all kinds of hoped for cures it began to print after pressing the 4 about 50 times quickly - the moment it began printing the 4 so also the 9 suddenly enabled itself.
I tried to repeat this after the next boot up and it didn't work.
What I did today to cure it was I printed a whole two lines of 8s by holding down the 8 key and getting lots of 888888888888888888 then I put the cursor somewhere in the middle of the 8s and press and held the 4 and it started printing like this 88888888444444444488888888 So the 4 had returned - I checked and pressed it once and it typed a single 4 ok - then I hopped over to try the 9 and that was printing normally without any fault and did repeats when holding too.
I had before found that switching the NumLock on and off a few times didn't do anything to fix it. So I phoned Acer who asked me if the the number re-starts after multiple presses and I said yes thinking he was on to something here so I said - "so what is the cure?" He said that the laptop may need the BIOS upgrading and I found that it was 1.14 or thereabouts I think and he gave me links to make 3 firmware upgrades consecutively on the BIOS to bring it up to 1.27 which is the latest BIOS for this machine. Needless to say I did what he said but it didn't change anything. So now I am back to thinking it may be an idea to ask on good forum if anyone has found this happen before?
Whenever I boot up the machine the 4 and the 9 don't work but all other numeric pad keys work. Also when switching off the Num Lock the 9 key also fails to work as a PgUp command and the 4 fails to work as a left scroll cursor key. Once I get the nos 4 & 9 going the two scroll and page functions return.
Surely this can't be dirt under the keys or the restart of the 9 could not be cured by kick starting the 4.
I have obtained a new keyboard but wouldn't think of fitting it myself and certainly not going to open the case during valid warranty. I hope someone can throw light on this for me.
Thank you
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Plado