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MS Ergonomic keyboard problem



 
 
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  #1  
Old July 6th 18, 07:58 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Tim Slattery[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 223
Default MS Ergonomic keyboard problem

We just bought a Microsoft "Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop" for my wife's
Dell tower running Windows 8.1. It consists of an ergonomic keyboard,
a mouse, and a separate number pad.

So we brought home plugged the USB nub into a USB port, removed the
little tabs keeping the batteries fresh, turned on the mouse and...

The mouse works fine. The keyboard and number pad don't. Oddly, the
keyboard wordks for typing in the password when she logs in to her
account. But once her desktop appears...nothing. No response from
keyboard or number pad.

One execption: there's a little key on both the keyboard and the
number pad that brings up a a calculator window. That works on both
the keyboard and number pad. Nothing else works. WTF??

We took it back to Best Buy, the Geek Squad guy plugged the USB nub
into his laptop and -- everything works. He says to leave the nub
plugged into the computer for a while, sometimes these gizmos will
download a driver from the Internet. I'm not so sure, but that's what
I'm doing at the moment.

Any ideas?

--
Tim Slattery
tim at risingdove dot com
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  #2  
Old July 6th 18, 09:06 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default MS Ergonomic keyboard problem

Tim Slattery wrote:
We just bought a Microsoft "Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop" for my wife's
Dell tower running Windows 8.1. It consists of an ergonomic keyboard,
a mouse, and a separate number pad.

So we brought home plugged the USB nub into a USB port, removed the
little tabs keeping the batteries fresh, turned on the mouse and...

The mouse works fine. The keyboard and number pad don't. Oddly, the
keyboard wordks for typing in the password when she logs in to her
account. But once her desktop appears...nothing. No response from
keyboard or number pad.

One execption: there's a little key on both the keyboard and the
number pad that brings up a a calculator window. That works on both
the keyboard and number pad. Nothing else works. WTF??

We took it back to Best Buy, the Geek Squad guy plugged the USB nub
into his laptop and -- everything works. He says to leave the nub
plugged into the computer for a while, sometimes these gizmos will
download a driver from the Internet. I'm not so sure, but that's what
I'm doing at the moment.

Any ideas?


Your symptom set doesn't suggest a hardware issue,
because your "calc button" tests has proved out a lot
of hardware paths and RF interference test cases.

It's possible for a running USB3 cable, to wipe out
Bluetooth communications at 2.4GHz, if the two items
are close enough together. But your description
doesn't sound like RF.

That leaves the question, of what possible installed
keyboard/mouse software, or localization setting
in Personalize, could be doing this ? Not a clue.

This software probably had a different name at some
point, but I forget what that is. Intellipoint ?
Check your Programs and Features control panel,
to see if something like that is installed.

https://www.microsoft.com/accessorie...eyboard-center

Customization software is required for mice which
have more than three buttons. Customization software
is required for keyboards with the "email" or
"Internet" rubber buttons on the upper right.
The regular keyboard matrix... shouldn't need anything.
Even if the localization was wrong, a keyup or
keydown event should still have a visible
(if wrong) effect.

You could use a software that records/displays
keyup and keydown events, and see if at least
that much is working. There could be USB packets
from the nano receiver.

You can also try a Linux LiveCD and do a quick
keyboard test, just for comparison. That will
again just verify that the keyboard is functional
on the same computer. Leaving the OS as the culprit.

Paul
  #3  
Old July 7th 18, 11:06 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Tim Slattery[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 223
Default MS Ergonomic keyboard problem

Paul wrote:

Tim Slattery wrote:
We just bought a Microsoft "Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop" for my wife's
Dell tower running Windows 8.1. It consists of an ergonomic keyboard,
a mouse, and a separate number pad.

So we brought home plugged the USB nub into a USB port, removed the
little tabs keeping the batteries fresh, turned on the mouse and...

The mouse works fine. The keyboard and number pad don't. Oddly, the
keyboard wordks for typing in the password when she logs in to her
account. But once her desktop appears...nothing. No response from
keyboard or number pad.

One execption: there's a little key on both the keyboard and the
number pad that brings up a a calculator window. That works on both
the keyboard and number pad. Nothing else works. WTF??

We took it back to Best Buy, the Geek Squad guy plugged the USB nub
into his laptop and -- everything works. He says to leave the nub
plugged into the computer for a while, sometimes these gizmos will
download a driver from the Internet. I'm not so sure, but that's what
I'm doing at the moment.

Any ideas?


Your symptom set doesn't suggest a hardware issue,
because your "calc button" tests has proved out a lot
of hardware paths and RF interference test cases.

It's possible for a running USB3 cable, to wipe out
Bluetooth communications at 2.4GHz, if the two items
are close enough together. But your description
doesn't sound like RF.

That leaves the question, of what possible installed
keyboard/mouse software, or localization setting
in Personalize, could be doing this ? Not a clue.

This software probably had a different name at some
point, but I forget what that is. Intellipoint ?
Check your Programs and Features control panel,
to see if something like that is installed.

https://www.microsoft.com/accessorie...eyboard-center

Customization software is required for mice which
have more than three buttons. Customization software
is required for keyboards with the "email" or
"Internet" rubber buttons on the upper right.
The regular keyboard matrix... shouldn't need anything.
Even if the localization was wrong, a keyup or
keydown event should still have a visible
(if wrong) effect.

You could use a software that records/displays
keyup and keydown events, and see if at least
that much is working. There could be USB packets
from the nano receiver.

You can also try a Linux LiveCD and do a quick
keyboard test, just for comparison. That will
again just verify that the keyboard is functional
on the same computer. Leaving the OS as the culprit.

Paul


--
Tim Slattery
tim at risingdove dot com
  #4  
Old July 7th 18, 11:12 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Tim Slattery[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 223
Default MS Ergonomic keyboard problem

Tim Slattery wrote:

We just bought a Microsoft "Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop" for my wife's
Dell tower running Windows 8.1. It consists of an ergonomic keyboard,
a mouse, and a separate number pad.

So we brought home plugged the USB nub into a USB port, removed the
little tabs keeping the batteries fresh, turned on the mouse and...

The mouse works fine. The keyboard and number pad don't. Oddly, the
keyboard wordks for typing in the password when she logs in to her
account. But once her desktop appears...nothing. No response from
keyboard or number pad.


We took the keyboard, etc, back to the store. The Geek Squad guy
plugged it into his laptop, and it worked fine. But it wouldn't work
on the wife's machine.

So we took it back. And bought another ergonomic keyboard elsewhere.
This one is just a keyboard, we're using the mouse that she used
previously. The keyboard plugs into a USB socket.

And the same thing happens. It works on the logon screen, the session
begins, and then....the keyboard becomes useless. Except for the
"Calculator" screen, which does cause a calculator window to pop up.
We plugged the keyboard into my laptop and it works fine.

I don't get it.

--
Tim Slattery
tim at risingdove dot com
  #5  
Old July 7th 18, 11:52 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Tim Slattery[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 223
Default MS Ergonomic keyboard problem

Tim Slattery wrote:

And the same thing happens. It works on the logon screen, the session
begins, and then....the keyboard becomes useless. Except for the
"Calculator" screen, which does cause a calculator window to pop up.
We plugged the keyboard into my laptop and it works fine.

I don't get it.


OK, one more time. I switched into my account on the wife's computer,
and the keyboard works! So I've setup a new account for her, and it
works there. That means that all her account-specific setting are
unavailable, of course, but at least the thing works.

Can anybody think of an account-specific setting that would disable
the keyboard?

--
Tim Slattery
tim at risingdove dot com
  #6  
Old July 8th 18, 02:41 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default MS Ergonomic keyboard problem

Tim Slattery wrote:
Tim Slattery wrote:

And the same thing happens. It works on the logon screen, the session
begins, and then....the keyboard becomes useless. Except for the
"Calculator" screen, which does cause a calculator window to pop up.
We plugged the keyboard into my laptop and it works fine.

I don't get it.


OK, one more time. I switched into my account on the wife's computer,
and the keyboard works! So I've setup a new account for her, and it
works there. That means that all her account-specific setting are
unavailable, of course, but at least the thing works.

Can anybody think of an account-specific setting that would disable
the keyboard?


When you Personalize (use the control panel or settings item),
there should be one or more language choices. This would be
a per-account preference. It might be in the same area where
you set currency display, numeric display with commas/periods,
that sort of thing.

I had to delete an entry in there, so my damn keyboard
would stop changing to French (cedilla, grave, acute).
It used to randomly switch on me, in the middle of typing
a sentence.

Paul
  #7  
Old July 8th 18, 11:03 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
mechanic
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,064
Default MS Ergonomic keyboard problem

On Sat, 07 Jul 2018 18:52:43 -0400, Tim Slattery wrote:

OK, one more time. I switched into my account on the wife's
computer, and the keyboard works!


So set up a new account on your machine and delete the old one.
Simple!
  #8  
Old July 8th 18, 02:25 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Tim Slattery[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 223
Default MS Ergonomic keyboard problem

Tim Slattery wrote:


And the same thing happens. It works on the logon screen, the session
begins, and then....the keyboard becomes useless. Except for the
"Calculator" screen, which does cause a calculator window to pop up.
We plugged the keyboard into my laptop and it works fine.


And we found it! The answer is FilterKeys, an accessibility feature.
It was set (I don't know how) to not recognize a key press until the
key was held down for half a second. (for people with shaky hands).
Turned FilterKeys off, and presto!

--
Tim Slattery
tim at risingdove dot com
  #9  
Old July 8th 18, 03:31 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Stephen Wolstenholme[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 275
Default MS Ergonomic keyboard problem

On Sun, 08 Jul 2018 09:25:27 -0400, Tim Slattery
wrote:

Tim Slattery wrote:


And the same thing happens. It works on the logon screen, the session
begins, and then....the keyboard becomes useless. Except for the
"Calculator" screen, which does cause a calculator window to pop up.
We plugged the keyboard into my laptop and it works fine.


And we found it! The answer is FilterKeys, an accessibility feature.
It was set (I don't know how) to not recognize a key press until the
key was held down for half a second. (for people with shaky hands).
Turned FilterKeys off, and presto!


I had an application years ago on W7 that was supposed to help people
by remembering key sequences when the key was help down. It lasted
about a minute on my PC before it went in the bin. A friend could not
understand how I managed without it!

Steve

--
http://www.npsnn.com

  #10  
Old July 8th 18, 07:51 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default MS Ergonomic keyboard problem

Tim Slattery wrote:
Tim Slattery wrote:


And the same thing happens. It works on the logon screen, the session
begins, and then....the keyboard becomes useless. Except for the
"Calculator" screen, which does cause a calculator window to pop up.
We plugged the keyboard into my laptop and it works fine.


And we found it! The answer is FilterKeys, an accessibility feature.
It was set (I don't know how) to not recognize a key press until the
key was held down for half a second. (for people with shaky hands).
Turned FilterKeys off, and presto!


I'll see if I can remember that item for the fault
tree the next time :-) I never would have guessed.

I know if you bang on the shift key, funny things
happen...

Paul
 




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