Acer Aspire 5532 Weird keyboard issue.

[knc]

My daughters Acer is acting flaky the qwerty row works, however the a key works the sd key doesnt and the f key works. (plus various other keys work and don't work). Ok bad or dirty keyboard right?


Well I plug in different USB keyboards and they behave differently with even less keys working. Very strange.

Yes booted from a rescue (kapersky) disk and keys still aren't working correctly.. something in bios?

 

[frenchscottie]

Does it do the same from safe mode?

It might sound daft but disconnect the laptop keyboard and then try usb one.

 

[knc]

I ordered a new keyboard and will test in the mean time.

 

[NYJimbo]

My daughters Acer is acting flaky the qwerty row works, however the a key works the sd key doesnt and the f key works. (plus various other keys work and don't work). Ok bad or dirty keyboard right?
Well I plug in different USB keyboards and they behave differently with even less keys working. Very strange.

I would lean towards the Super I/O chip or if its integrated, the southbridge. Since both the normal keyboard (considered a ps/2) and the usb (hid) are failing then its likely the keyboard controller in the super i/o (or the chip it is buried in) is failing. Like frenchscottie said, it wouldnt hurt to see if you can disconnect the real laptop keyboard and then try the USB again to eliminate any shorts or weird scan codes coming from the laptops keyboard. If you remove the keyboard and the USB keyboard starts to work ok then that leads you more to it being a bad laptop keyboard. But if you remove the laptop keyboard and still get weird key strokes from the USB I would lean towards a motherboard issue.

Don't forget to check RAM as well, strangest things can happen from bad ram.