My Laptop keyboard types wrong characters!

[denny]

Hi, My client has a Dell Inspiration 3800, the keys have been doing the wrong characters, but only some specific keys e.g. press "o" get "6".
If you use a start up disk, to get DOS, the keyboard works fine. Even tried swapping the keyboard.
Any ideas please.

[brayan]

Turn off num lock in the BIOS.

[robert]

I know NT use to do this but I never looked to see if W2K does but NT remembers the Num Lock state. So if Num lock was on in NT when you logged off it would remember that state and its on at login. Since its not on during a DOS boot then I'd assume you have the Num lock toggled properly.
This is the NT4 fix and maybe its the same

SYMPTOMS
=======
Portable computers have the NUMLOCK key set to on when users try to log on to the system. This can cause users to type passwords incorrectly, because users often don't check the keyboard indicators before typing their passwords.

CAUSE
=====
by default NUMLOCK is set to on.

RESOLUTION
==========
You can modify this setting by editing the registry on the portable computer. Normally, the computer applies the user settings when the user logs on, but it uses the default user profile when it is first turned on, before the user has logged on. To turn this functionality off, the default user settings must be modified. The Keyboard entry contains user preferences as defined by choosing the Keyboard icon in Control Panel. Entries are found under this registry path:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard
InitialKeyboardIndicators REG_SZ Number set it default to 0.

Specifies initial values for keys. 0 means that NUMLOCK is turned off after the
user logs on; 2 means NUMLOCK is turned on after the user logs on. This value is
set when logging off or during shutdown to preserve the state of the NUMLOCK key
at that time.

This value can also be changed on a user basis by modifying
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard and the same registry key.

[denny]

I already turned off num lock at boot up in the BIOS.

[justin]

This likely is a BIOS setting, and can be changed in the BIOS setup utility accessible at startup.

If not:

* Run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE).
* Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard (If the Keyboard key isn't there, add it.)
* Double-click the InitialKeyboardIndicators value on the right. (If it's not there, select New from the Edit menu, then String Value, and type InitialKeyboardIndicators for the name of the new value.)
* Change the value to any of the following:
0 - all indicators off
1 - Caps Lock on
2 - Num Lock on
4 - Scroll Lock on
Or, combine them by adding the corresponding values:
3 - Caps Lock and Num Lock on
5 - Caps Lock and Scroll Lock on
6 - Num Lock and Scroll Lock on
7 - Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock on
* Close the Registry Editor when you're done.

All the change should take effect when next time you start Windows.

[denny]

THANKS.
It was the num lock, amazing how the simple things can be so hard.
I really appreciate everyone’s help.

[mista]

Hi, I am attempting to fix a laptop that has problems with the numlock area of the keypad. It seems to change to a different setting for these keys randomly. Occasionally they stop working alltogether and sometimes the num lock value for the keys appears. In general the keyboard is problematic sometimes I press the keys and it do on and off again can fix it as does just pressing 'ins' sometimes.

Sometimes if I press another key outside this area then nothing appears and if I try to hold down the left arrow key it doesn't always scroll bck over what is written smoothly.

It is fairly old and the 'd' key is missing. If it sounds like anything that can be fixed some avice would be fantastic.

cheers

Edit - I'm having problems ('-r6b3e0s' <- thats the 'word' that just came up when I tried to type problems the first time!!!) replacing the driver. I have tried this but it goes to the microsoft update page and I am not sure how to make it download the driver. It goes to the update page and just searches for any updates that are needed...

[accaicedo]

I tried the steps you listed (regedit) and itwent back to 2 after I restarted the computer. Any other ideas? please help.