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Posted by Tom Scales on November 13, 2005, 10:19 pm
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> Hi, I'm trying to help my sister who has a new Dell Inspiron 2200 with
> some strange behavior. I should first say that she's had McAfee Firewall
> / Anti-Virus installed since day 1, kept updated, and never opens
> potentially unsafe attachments. Ok, so after a month or so with the new
> computer it began behaving strangely. First, pressing the "l" key changes
> the program to full screen and back. The "9" key acts as "End" and vice
> versa. Randomly (it seems), type begins to automatically insert despite
> "Ins" having been pressed. Other examples:
>
> "t" would come out as "t4"
> "y" would come out as "7" and vice versa
> "1" would always be preceded by a Tab
> "3" would cause search bar to come up
>
> These problems weren't static, and would come and go, and get better and
> worse at different times. Updated anti-virus scan as well as Spyboy scan
> revealed nothing. I eventually advised her to format her hard drive,
> which she did, but the problem resurfaced from the outset. I then had her
> disable the HD from the BIOS and boot directly to her Dell Windows XP
> CD-ROM, and even from there the problems surfaced.
>
> This sounds like virus behavior to me but I can't understand how it can
> survive after a fresh format. I also don't understand why it appears when
> booting directly to a CD-ROM. Naturally, I advised my sister to buy the
> shortest possible warranty, so Dell no longer wants to (or is obligated
> to) help.
>
> Any ideas/advise would be greatly appreciated. TIA.
> --
> Charles C. Shyu
> http://home.earthlink.net/~shyuc/shyu.html
>
Ouch. Laptop = LONGEST warranty
Any way, does the same thing happen with an external keyboard plugged in?
If not, replace the internal keyboard. Should be reasonably inexpensive and
pretty simple.
If I had to guess, I'd say your sister spilled liquid into it and doesn't
want to admit it.
Tom
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