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Thread ID: 52824	2004-12-31 02:39:00	Laptop keyboard malfunction?	Morse (4575)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
309158	2004-12-31 02:39:00	Hi again...my old Satellite 410CDT is misbehaving. Sometimes the keyboard works perfectly, other times nothing at all happens, and at still other times strange characters appear, e.g. only vowels with the ' over them as in the word <cafe'>. At other times when testing a repetition of a letter will produce for example ^D^D^D^D. This happens in Notepad/Wordpad and true DOS. A (more) knowledgeable friend suggests the BIOS has failed. Has anyone experienced this and is there a fix?	Morse (4575)
309159	2004-12-31 03:02:00	Nah if the BIOS failed, (or dead, if thats what your mate thought), the system would be completely dead. You wouldnt get in it at all. Without a BIOS a system is only useful as a doorstop. Try changing the language in control panel. Or the keymap for keyboard. Someone may have changed it. Or give the kb a clean.	Speedy Gonzales (78)
309160	2004-12-31 03:29:00	Hi Morse, I have a 420CDS which had a very similar problem some months ago. When I took it to pieces I found that a small battery, the one that maintains the realtime clock, had gone completely flat, ruptured and spread corrosive chemicals around the pins of the keyboard processor chip. I was lucky enough to be able to clean the area and the keyboard is now OK again but I do stress that I consider myself to have been very lucky. HTH and good luck PC	Peter Cox (544)
309161	2005-01-01 04:22:00	Thanks guys... Speedy - no joy there...all seems ok in that department. Peter - I will have a look at that but as the realtime clock is working OK it doesn't seem to be a battery problem. Further symptoms developed :- (intermittent same as others) Double click on desktop icons to open but get properties box instead. Click on start button and start menu flashes on and off again. By the way is there any way I can go straight to my thread in this program without having to search thru all the other postings?	Morse (4575)
309162	2005-01-01 04:35:00	By the way is there any way I can go straight to my thread in this program without having to search thru all the other postings?You can do this quite easily. First go to the User CP section and look under Settings and Options > Edit Options. Scroll down and make sure you have selected to subscribe to threads. Then when you next visit the forum, you can click on the Quick Links (top right) and select Subscribed Threads to have your list displayed, or you can also just click on the User CP link which opens up on the Subscribed Thread list page. If you have selected to be notified of new posts in a subscribed thread via email, then by clicking on that URL in the email it will also bring you straight back to that thread :)	Jen (38)
309163	2005-01-01 06:00:00	It may just be old age. I have an old laptop (with 16MB of memory :D), and sometimes certain keys don't work on it. If I'm lucky I can get them to work a few seconds later by trying other keys, but I suspect it is old age. I also have an AT keyboard which has a key that doesn't work all the time. It may be the connections, or it may just be the underlying age of your laptop taking effect.	agent (30)
309164	2005-01-03 03:30:00	Thanks all...now I have a Satellite 4080XCDT which appears to have caught the same disease. with some keys displaying another keys engravings. I think I will take lessons in smoke signals or tom-toms. Happy new year to all. :badpc: :D	Morse (4575)
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