mkk

I encountered an odd thing the other day at work and even though I'm having a short vacation I can't quite put it aside. A customer came in with a Logitech G11 keyboard that was acting up. It's likely to be replaced or refunded, but when testing it out before sending it back to the supplier I bumped into something I found hard to believe at first.

They numeric keypad on the G11 didn't work, at least not by putting out any numbers. Keypad_5 seemed to intermittently act as a mouse button though, but that was not the problem. The thing is that even after rebooting the system, no other keyboards numeric pad worked either in number mode. Switched USB-ports, uninstalled keyboard driver (microsoft default, Setpoint not involved). No change.

Good thing I don't have it at home or I would stay up all night on my free time to go over it.

Takaharu

Probably a glitch in the board. You can use a keyboard as a mouse if the operating system is set to it so it kinda makes sense that you can click with a fault.

I can top that one though - at my workplace I got a complaint from one of the agents saying that the PC shuts down every time it was turned on. True enough, I checked it out by trying to log on and the PC shut down. I soon discovered that when you pressed either of the Alt keys the PC shut down (as you might expect, on the Ctrl+Alt+Delete screen the PC shut down). I replaced the keyboard - problem solved.
On the way to add the faulty keyboard to the disposal pile I found that there was water dripping out of the keyboard; evidently, someone had spilled a cup of water over the keyboard and didn't think to mention it. It's still odd though; I don't know of any keyboards or keyboard shortcut that can shut down a PC so how would a water spillage do this? This was either Alt key too...

__________________

BlueMak

Eh, he probably enabled the keys to be used as a mouse through accesibility options, and there is nothing wrong with the mouse or the OS.

I haven't used it in a long time, but there is an option in Windows to turn the num keys into mouse. Just look for it.

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

mkk

Yeah it's wierd, but water and electronics can do funny things. Just thinking, did the keyboard have a special power-off button? Then maybe the water shorted out the logics to induce power-off with other keys as well. If not then perhaps there is some combination of keys on the board that can do the same with that particular logic chip. Edit: Oh, and the motherboard may have a say too.

Interesting, that's one place I didn't look. Although this happened on a clean test-system. I didn't think that the G11 could store settings in the keyboard and automatically transfer it to another system, but I'll send a note for someone else to look there next week.