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#1
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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