Strange StickyKeys or CTRL plus key type of problem

[plusman]

One of my PC's running Windows 7 Pro has just suddenly started acting very strangely.

Basically when I press the "r" key, the run dialog box opens. The same issue happens when I press other keys on my keyboard - it is as if I am pressing the CTRL-key plus the other key. This happened suddenly without warning and I have been unable to get rid of it.

I have tried the following (none of which made any difference):
1. Explicitly turned off stickykeys in the ease-of-use/acessability options. [they weren't switched on, but I unticked everything anyway]
2. Tried a different USB keyboard
3. Tried the on-screen keybaord
4. Tried booting in safe Mode and using 1-3 above.
5. Edited the registry (which was fun when you can't enter "r" into the search box as run immediately opens), and changing the following:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Accessibility\StickyKeys - changed Flag to 506 (also tried 26)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Accessibility\Keyboard Response - changed Flag to 122
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Accessibility\ToggleKeys - changed Flag to 58

[I also changed the above keys in HKEY_USERS\Default\ControlPanel\Accessibility]

6. Reverted to an earlier image of my C: drive from earlier this month and made the above changes to that restored image.
7. Run an anti-virus check using Avast (which normally runs in the background anyway) - it came up clean.

None of it made any difference - they keys are still behaving strangely.

Can anybody suggest what is causing this issue and how I can resolve it?
Is it software or hardware (even BIOS) related???

I've tried all that I could think of, so any helpful suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

[oscer1]

Hi

to me it sounds like the keyboard controller is faulty, since it does it with another keyboard and on screen keyboard. have you tried running a live disk like ubuntu to verify not a software issue?

 

[plusman]

I have managed to resolve the issue - but to be honest I am not sure how!

In addition to the steps outlined in my original post I tried the following:
* Booted up in safe mode - made not difference
* Rebooted the BIOS by taking out and then reinstalling the BIOS battery - made no difference
* Ran various rootkit scans (Kapersky tdsskiller and Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit beta) - both came up clean; keyboards still didn't work

* Booted from a Ubuntu distro on a USB - all of the USB keyboards I used worked fine! However on rebooting into Windows I was getting the same issue. Pressing "r" caused the Run dialog to appear, "e" caused Explorer to open and so on - as if the CTRL key was being pressed at the same time.
* I tried the keyboard in different USB ports - still not working properly.

So I rebooted using a PS2 keyboard (luckily my motherboard - a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R - had PS2 ports).....
and the keyboard worked!

I then reinserted the original USB keyboard - and it worked as well! As did the other USB keyboard that I had tried.

Now I have no idea what the problem was or why putting in a keyboard into the PS2 port worked and cleared it all up; but it did. I reinstalled my most recent image of my C: drive (as I had reverted to an older one in case something had recently changed in my system) - and the keyboard works OK.

So somehow the problem was solved!

I will post again if the issue reappears - but for the moment, keep fingers crossed.

 

[oscer1]

Hope it stays that way