Compaq Presario V5115 Keyboard Problem

I'm posting this on behalf of a friend with a new Compaq Presario V5115 US. He is finding that the keyboard seemingly randomly starts producing capitals whilst he's typing, as if the caps lock button had been hit, except the caps lock light remains off. The only way out he has found is to press both shift keys simultaneously. Also, he complains that it is occasionally seemingly missing characters he has typed.

He's turned on the Accessibility option that causes the PC to beep when caps lock is pressed, but the machine goes into caps mode without beeping.

The obvious conclusion is a hardware fault, but he thinks it only happens when using all MS Office 2003 applications, and not when using Wordpad. He has turned off the auto-capitalisation in Word, BTW. The machine has been back to Compaq who claim to have fixed the problem, but of course it remains.

Does this ring any bells with anyone?

 

Thanks, but my friend is currently abroad (hence the laptop) and doesn't have the option to try a spare keyboard right now, so whilst he will try it eventually, does anyone have any other ideas?

 

He should run tests between Office and Wordpad. If Office was the problem it may mean uninstalling and reinstalling. MS have a full knowledgebase for Office and there are specialised websites that deal with Office problems. He will need to isolate it to Office first.

Matt

 

Shortcut key settings:

These are standard shortcut key settings, they may have been customized.

These are from the Help menu (shortcuts) in Word.

Matt

 

Thanks mattman. I no longer use any version of MS Office, so this detailed information is much more useful than the vague and woolly advice I was having to give. I'll pass it on and let you know what happens.

 

A maybe

 

The Compaq is now chez Brummig.

I tried the suggestions by mattman, with no joy. Trying another keyboard isn't an option as the only way to do that is with a USB keyboard and I don't have one.

The problem doesn't seem to manifest itself when using Open Office, though it has manifested itself in both Word and Notepad. However, it stopped happening in Notepad after the keyboard driver was re-installed.

When the keyboard starts producing caps it's in shift-lock mode, not caps-lock mode, which is weird. It all sounded like a perverted set of accessibility options were being turned on (avoid brief key presses, hit something-or-other to get shift-lock, both shifts to get back), so I played with the accessibility options. That got me no further forward.

HP/Compaq now insist on a "product re-install ", which I strongly suspect will be a major waste of time since the product has been like this since new. Has anyone got any more considered suggestions?

 

I'll try to keep throwing a few ideas unless someone can spot the cause. Maybe you or somebody else will see something.

You should(??) be able to uninstall the Accessibility items from Windows in Add/Remove Programs under the Windows Setup button. I have seen though, in the Win XP forum here that Windows XP won't let you uninstall some items even though it appears it is going to (one reason I like 98). In 98 I uninstall Accessibility immediately if it is not going to be used.

To troubleshoot the problem you will need to isolate it. What are the areas? Hardware, ask around if you might be able to use a USB keyboard to test with. I am trying to think of some way to run MS Word outside of Windows (without much luck ).

There are updated drivers for the Quick Launch buttons and touchpad:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...oduct=1841909&lang=en&softwareitem=ob-38774-1

Try looking at drivers higher up the line. This will mean the chipset drivers. The main drivers may be in folders on the root C: drive. Look at reinstalling those.

The otherside of the troubleshooting is to look at Windows or the software. Windows, uninstall Accessibility. Software, If it only happens in MS Word, I would try uninstalling and reinstalling that. Do you have his original setup disks?

There is a forum for Compaq and Hp users, you could try searching or asking there. Let me know if you need help finding it, start here:
http://welcome.hp.com/country/uk/en/support.html

Matt

 

Thanks, I'm just trying these now. One thing I can add is that Office doesn't exhibit this behaviour on a desktop machine running the same version of Office.

Edit: Oh, and I've just been told it does it in Gmail on IE, so I think we can rule it out as an Office thing (I hope - it would be nice to knock something out of the list of suspects).

 

Here is you solution:

Sell the compaq and get a better brand like Seanix or Dell. I have hear nothing but problems from compaq computers my old laptop did that a few times a year but only for a day or two.

As previosly stated it could be a hardware issue, try to uninstall the keyboard and then reboot on a rebot windows should recognize the keyboard and reinstall it for you.

 

You must have selective reading don't you I also handed out a suggestion if you remember correctly.

I just thought you could also try to troubleshoot the keyboard or run a hardware diagnostic on it.

 

Ordinarily I would agree with PeteC regarding Elite's post, but as it happens, the owner of the laptop is seriously considering cutting his losses and doing something similar to what Elite suggested. However, he rejected Dell in favour of the Compaq after encountering bad customer feedback about Dell when doing his research, so things aren't quite as straightforward as you suggest, Elite.

Can you tell me what sort of typist you are, Elite? Fast or slow, two-fingered or touch typist?

Getting back to trying to fix the problem, updating the driver raised the question of "what am I actually replacing here? ". On my PC, under Keyboards in Device Manager it lists "Standard 101/102-key ... Keyboard ". On the Compaq it lists something called something like "Quick Launch Buttons ". When you update this, it says on the website the driver is for "Quick Launch Buttons on the keyboard and external Easy Access Buttons Keyboard ". Is that the keyboard driver? If not, where is it?

Anyhow, I updated it. This promptly turned on the touch-pad (the laptop is used with a mouse). So we turned it off. The following day the touch-pad was back on again, so we turned it off again. Since then the touch-pad has remained off, but the keyboard continues to play up. The website does say it fixes a GPF (which I've seen); I'm beginning to suspect this piece of software is riddled with bugs, and the version number of 5.2G suggests to me I'm right. That raises the question "can I use just a vanilla keyboard driver, and if so which one? ". "Added value" features are, of course, unwanted. Edit: Ditto the touch-pad.

I haven't tried mattman's other suggestions yet, as I currently don't have access to the machine.