I often borrow my mother's laptop. There is something about the way I type that keeps triggering some odd keyboard mixup. I'll be typing along and all of a sudden everything is in caps and periods turn into >s and I can't highlight properly and so forth. (Nope, the caps lock key is not on.) This never happens to my mother which is why I say it's my typing.
I have, on occasion, accidentally been able to fix it (for a while I thought alt shift was working as a fix, but not lately). Rebooting doesn't work--at least not by using restart. If I actually shut down and leave it off for a couple of minutes it resets itself and is fine when I turn it back on.
Any ideas about a) what combinations of keys I'm hitting to make this happen or b) what I can do to fix it?
Posted by Uprooted (Member # 8353) on :
P.S. I suspect it's something I'm doing with my left pinky and/or nearby finger--seems like that's where my hand position usually is just before things go skewonkers but I haven't been able to figure out just what I'm hitting.
Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
Sounds like your shift key is jamming. It's not just a capslock because of the fact that periods are turning into greater-thans. I'm not sure if laptop keyboard keys are designed to pop out for cleaning like a desktop keyboard. Do you have inputs for an external keyboard?
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
I think there might be a 'sticky key' feature on the computer, though I really don't know the details of it. I just got a new computer and whenever I would hit the Shift key repeatedly, a message would come up about 'sticky keys' and say that if I hit the Shift five times in rapid succession, it would engage this feature.
In my case, it was because I was holding the Shift Key down until it went into Repeat, at which time it would appear as a rapid succession of Shift key hits.
I suspect if you go the Control Panel -Keyboard there is probably some way to turn this feature off.
You can also do what I did, which is lengthen the delay before 'Repeat' starts, and slow the 'Repeat' speed.
Steve/BlueWizard
Posted by calaban (Member # 2516) on :
To deactivate sticky keys you can tap shift five times in rapid succession or tap both shift keys simultaneously.
Posted by Uprooted (Member # 8353) on :