Keyboard failure or virus?

P

psycopuppy

Geek Trainee
Hi guys,
so I am having trouble with this laptop. It started out acting like the h key was stuck. Whenever I clicked on anything I could type text into (search bar, word documents, etc) it would fill that space with h's (like this: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh) I popped the key off, cleaned all around it, then started the laptop again. Now the entire keyboard dosent work. I decided to run a virus scan (person I got this from said he ran a virus scan and found a virus on it so I thought I would to) it found 4 more viruses, I removed them, rebooted and now whenever I click on the start button it flashes and the help and support menu opens. I have not yet taken the laptop apart and seen if there is something wrong with the keyboard. So what do you guys think? is the keyboard dying or could there be a virus?
 
first find out if your keyboard is bad.
determine the keyboard bad by getting you a boot disc of some kind that can either take you to a dos environment, winpe, or something that will allow you to see on the screen what your pressing.
doing this will take you outside the environment where the virus works so this will tell you a lot.
a windows 98 original cd will boot into dos. in dos you can test each key.
also you can get winpe or bartpe from torrent sites which loads a windows xp environment off the disc.
they usually contain all sorts of software's for testing, diagnostics, backups, etc.
in there they should have something you can load up to test the keys.

if you find out the keys dont work then replace the keyboard.
if they do work then consider reloading windows.
 
violetblueskies said:
first find out if your keyboard is bad.
determine the keyboard bad by getting you a boot disc of some kind that can either take you to a dos environment, winpe, or something that will allow you to see on the screen what your pressing.
doing this will take you outside the environment where the virus works so this will tell you a lot.
a windows 98 original cd will boot into dos. in dos you can test each key.
also you can get winpe or bartpe from torrent sites which loads a windows xp environment off the disc.
they usually contain all sorts of software's for testing, diagnostics, backups, etc.
in there they should have something you can load up to test the keys.

if you find out the keys dont work then replace the keyboard.
if they do work then consider reloading windows.
Click to expand...

I have an xp boot cd, will this work?
Also, I checked the keyboard to see if there was a hardware malfunction. Keyboard looked fine. I then tried unplugging the keyboard and seeing if I could just work off of an external keyboard. It acted the same way even though there was no keyboard plugged in. Also, when I am booting up it continusly beeps until it completly boots up.

I'll try the cd thing and post my findings on here.

edit: cd didnt work, went into recovery counsle and the screen still got covered with h's
 
okay so let me get this straight...
when you completely remove the keyboard from the laptop (meaning remove the ribbon cable from the motherboard of the laptop) it still makes the beeping noises and produces the h's? (no external keyboard)
it doesn't make sense that it would produce h's without any keyboard. as far as the beeping:
i had a laptop i was working on that had the beeping noises (while booting up to windows) and when diagnosing it i found that the beeping stopped when the keyboard was completely removed.
it turned out the keyboard was bad and replaced it.
 
violetblueskies said:
okay so let me get this straight...
when you completely remove the keyboard from the laptop (meaning remove the ribbon cable from the motherboard of the laptop) it still makes the beeping noises and produces the h's? (no external keyboard)
it doesn't make sense that it would produce h's without any keyboard. as far as the beeping:
i had a laptop i was working on that had the beeping noises (while booting up to windows) and when diagnosing it i found that the beeping stopped when the keyboard was completely removed.
it turned out the keyboard was bad and replaced it.
Click to expand...

yes, completely removed the keyboard (ribbon to) had no external keyboard attached, was still beeping continuously while it was booting up.
 
did it still do the h's with the keyboard removed and no external keyboard?
have you tried removing the touchpad mouse cable?
 
yes, it still did the hs's.
no i have not tried removing the mousepad, ill try that now...nope that didnt work either. Time to wipe the computer and hope for the best?
 
sorry forgot about this thread haha.
well i don't know what else to think.
thing is i never seen this issue before.
i would be curious to know if reinstalling the os worked for you.
i have my doubts that it will make any difference but still.
 
well, I finally managed to backup the data and move it to another computer. Im trying to reinstall the os but (of course) it is giving me problems. I first tried to restore the factory defaults that had been installed on the hard drive. Couldnt even get to the screen. I then tried using the xp cd to wipe it out that way. Here is where it gets weird. The system wont boot to the cd (I have tried just letting it auto boot to the cd and making it boot to the cd) it didnt work. I then let it boot all the way up so I could see if the system could see the disk. It shows that there is a cd drive there but it wont let me even open it up to see the files inside. I checked the cd on a different computer to make sure it still works and it does. So...any ideas?
 
it's starting to sound like a motherboard issue.
thing about you getting h's even without the internal or external keyboard says there might be something wrong with maybe a chip on the motherboard that controls info received from the keyboard.
it's outputting h's without any input device so where is this request for h's coming from. this is the question to ask.
there could be other keys and combinations that might be occurring too that you may not know about.
the beeping sounds during boot up are probably repeated queries like holding down a key on your keyboard which would yield the same sounds.
i would try some things.

if you can try to update your bios.
try different ram or if you have 2 sticks remove one test and swap and try the other one.
try removing the hdd and just boot off the cd to see any irregularities and try the reverse.
try removing the wifi card.
if you know how to use a multi meter, try to check the solder joints on the keyboard port on the motherboard to see if there are any shorts.
take the laptop completely apart, use compressed air and blow it clean of debris.
you can even try bathing the motherboard in a small bath of rubbing alcohol and let it dry for 1-2 days. making sure you remove the cpu and any attachments of coarse.
little more extreme would be to have someone reflow the motherboard. this requires someone who has a reflow machine.

otherwise man i don't know what to tell you.
it could be something as little as a small piece of metal shorting something on your motherboard or even just a defective piece on the motherboard.
the only way to find out more is to tear it apart and see what you can make of it.
 
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