9 replies to this topic

[YoungWinston]

Hi,

I'm trying to help out a friend who has an old HP laptop running Windows XP (SP1) which he wants to give to his daughter.
A couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, it suddenly started acting as though the Ctrl key was permanently pressed. Any place that you need to type in text either doesn't work or executes the "normal action" for the Ctrl+key pressed (eg, pressing the G key in Notepad gives you the 'Go to' dialog).

The keyboard (which, I should mention, is an AZERTY) is plainly not at fault, because I've wiped the entire machine (including the MBR on the hard disk) and installed Linux on it, and it works just fine.

Tried re-installing Windows XP from the original disks and very strange things start to happen:
1. Setup seems to get the whole kb config wrong and requires you to press ? (which is in the same place as the M key on a QWERTY) to simulate the Enter key; and several other screens also seem to have difficulties recognising keystrokes (a few of the keys at the top, like backspace, home, end and the F[0-9] keys appear to work normally, but none of the letters.
2. Finally got XP installed (including a full disk format) and the machine rebooted perfectly ONCE. Keyboard working, everything fine.
3. Booted a 2nd time and I'm back to square 1.
4. Tried removing all 2nd language keyboards in the languages section: No go.
5. Tried installing the SP3 upgrade: No go.
6. Tried removing the keyboard driver so that Windows would reinstall on reboot: No go.

One other thing: If I hold down a letter key at the start of the boot sequence and keep it held until Windows starts beeping because you're holding a key down, everything works just fine.

Anybody have any ideas? This site was oft posted on the pages I Googled. If not, I guess it'll just be a Linux box from now on.

Thanks in advance.

Winston

[randallf]

It works fine in Linux? I can't imagine... maybe it's the driver?

[YoungWinston]

It works fine in Linux? I can't imagine... maybe it's the driver?

Seems odd that it would be. The unit has worked fine for years.
As I said, I also completely wiped the disk (incl. MBR) before re-installing XP (from the original CD). Seems more like something (maybe some weird keystroke combination) has altered the BIOS, or perhaps some setting on the motherboard, that only affects Windows. Haven't been able to find anything useful in the BIOS setup though.

Thanks anyway.

Winston

[randallf]

Try windows 7? It runs as well as XP on anything that runs XP.

[YoungWinston]

Try windows 7? It runs as well as XP on anything that runs XP.

Not an option, unfortunately. The guy is out of work, but had this old laptop lying around and wanted to give it to his daughter for Christmas.

I guess I'll have to try setting it up as a dual-boot Linux/XP box and he'll have to explain to her about holding down a letter key when booting.

Winston

[SifJar]

It's an ugly solution, but this should "fix" it:

Ctrl::Return
^a::Return
^b::Return
^c::Return
^d::Return
^e::Return
^f::Return
^g::Return
^h::Return
^i::Return
^j::Return
^k::Return
^l::Return
^m::Return
^n::Return
^o::Return
^p::Return
^q::Return
^r::Return
^s::Return
^t::Return
^u::Return
^v::Return
^w::Return
^x::Return
^y::Return
^z::Return

by "fix" I mean it will completely disable the ctrl button. If you actually need to use the ctrl button for whatever reason, hold shift while pressing ctrl and whatever other button (e.g. what would usually have been "ctrl+o" becomes "shift+ctrl+o")

[YoungWinston]

It's an ugly solution, but this should "fix" it:

Thanks SifJar. Where would I put that? One of the .ini files? I'm much more familiar with Linux/Unix than with Windows, but I'm happy to give it a try.

Winston

[dave_100]

It's an ugly solution, but this should "fix" it:

Thanks SifJar. Where would I put that? One of the .ini files? I'm much more familiar with Linux/Unix than with Windows, but I'm happy to give it a try.

Winston

Create a notepad file with that text in it, save it with the extension .ahk, and open it with AutoHotkey

[SifJar]

It's an ugly solution, but this should "fix" it:

Thanks SifJar. Where would I put that? One of the .ini files? I'm much more familiar with Linux/Unix than with Windows, but I'm happy to give it a try.

Winston

as dave_100 explained, run it as an AHK script. I thought that was what you were asking for considering we are on the AHK forums