Laptop troubleshooting forum: Please help, my computer goes rogue on me

Hi, I'm familiar with this model of laptop. From past experiences with them I've found that if they're dropped or jarred violently that sometimes the small ribbon cables and their mating connectors can become dislodged. Also there's one or two screws on the bottom of the laptop case that hold the keyboard down as well as slide latches at the top by the F keys. I would remove the screw(s) and release the latches and inspect the keyboard/Ribbon for damage or dislodging. Keyboards can usually be had on EBay for $5 or so. That's a small price to pay to end the aggravation if that's the issue. I would replace it on general principal. Repetitive keys or keys not working at all points to a keyboard issue, likely a cracked circuit board. Hopefully it's not a damaged motherboard as that's about the biggest repair expense aside from replacing the Display.

Easy, turn your laptop upside down on the table, of course.. find a teeny weeny philip screwdriver with a cross point, you knowa? There is several covers with a screw at the edge, you can experiment each cover by loosening up the screw .. covers are not easy to come off as they are very tightly snugged. Be patient with your fingers and some licks on fingers trying to rub the cover off . once you think you find the right cover for the hard drive. There is still antoher screw to loosen to get the usually shiny metal case that house the hard drive inside. pry it out of its connection on the other end. It will feel creepy . you are still not done as the hard drive is still securely screwed inside the shiny metal case or plastic in some cases .. usually there is four screws to hold the hard drive inside the protective shiny or platic case. Get a good 2.5 inch hard drive enclosure. 3.5 inch hard drive enclosure is for bigger desktop harddrive that will require a transformer to go along with usb . your laptop hard drive will not require any transformer to go along with the usb cable. inserting your hard drive into the enclosure is no different than your laptop or desktop, but it takes care and attention to make sure that it is not upside down , reverse or thing like that.. your files should be still readable if you just quit using your cracked up laptop right now. dont try to risk using it if your laptop is already too old,,, save the hard drive like it is yoru heart..now!

maartsen has this problem solved. Why bother this community with a question about dropping a computer?

maartsen is also right about why CNET is even posting this.

Dropping any electronic piece of equipment on a hard surface with resulting intermitten failure means go to an expert to have it fixed (unless you are the expert in that piece of equipment).

I have had the same problem with two Dell CPx machines and one C-610. Various keys would not yield anything, or the wrong character was displayed. In each case, it was a keyboard gone bad. One technician says fine line traces are easily broken on these things (perhaps due to heavy handed typing, or in the case cited a fall to the floor).

I bought one new KB from Dell, got the other two used, all worked just fine after a relatively simple installation. You can get service CDs on eBay for a few dollars showing replacement procedures. If you are in the SF bay area, parts-machines can be found at Wierd Stuff Warehouse, or at the monthly DeAnza college electronic flea market (March-October). Also a good place for laptop power supplies at low prices, but watch out for batteries ... always a crap shoot how good they are.

Bill Carlson

I'm not dismissing all the other possible solutions that have been given as all are very feasible, and dropping laptops on the floor is not a good thing at any time, but I think that if it was a hardware fault it would have shown up in a more dramatic way, like actually not working. I would like to add my possible solution. Having had this problem on other machines that were running AVG on them, I eventually found that it was AVG and its background scans that was stopping them and any key presses suddenly appeared after time. Granted this was on somewhat slow machines. After uninstalling AVG I found that the problem was no longer present. I did however re-install AVG and up to now have had no more problems.

Hi Michael, I had the same problem recently. I'm blind (I use the computer with the aid of special talking software)

1/ Press Windows key + E (this opens "My Computer")
2/ Right click c:
3/ Select properties
4/ Select "Tools" tab
5/ Select "Check Now"
6/ Put a tick in both boxes and select "start"
7/ A window will appear telling you disk will be checked next time you restart.
8/ Press Yes and restart machine

hope this works
Bob

OK, didnt anyone see the part where this person held computer upside down and shook it? Between dropping it on the floor and shaking it upside down (who on earth told you to do that)! Almost guarantees the hard drive is destroyed. It would be worth the time and effort to buy a new hard drive and install and then go from there. The worst that can happen is you will have a spare hard drive.

I've seen the little keyboard pointer cause rogue cursor action and I wouldn't be surprised if it caused strange keypresses also after dropping the computer. Try disabling it (usually it's somewhere in the mouse properties) and see if that helps.

mess around with your keyboard driver. if that doesnt solve the problem i believe you have a bad keyboard buffer chip.

This is common with MS Office 2007 / Outlook 2007. MS has catalogued this in the KB but I dont currently have the article number.

I have found that this behavior is aggravated by both anti-malware programs and by IE 7/8 RS feed synchronization.

To prove that it is an RSS/Outlook issue disable RSS feed synchronization in both Outlook (if used) and IE7/8 (if enabled). Go to you profile temp folder and delete all files. Restart Outlook 007. The problem should go away. Re-enabling feed sync will cause the issue to reappear.

As far as I know there has been no fix for this issue posted by Microsoft. I now run with RSS feed sync set to once per day and do no experience this issue.

I suspect that any program that places a large number of .tmp files in the temp folder will also cause this to happen. MS says it is due to OUTLB.EXE (an Outlook 2007 utility) scanning these items when present.

This fixed my battle with this issue. Hope it helps your situation.

Here are some threads supportive of this issue:

http://forums.techarena.in/ms-office-support/951089.htm

I'm an HP field engineer. The NC6400 is a business class notebook and very durable. I would suspect the software first. Something could be stealing too many cpu cycles. If when you dropped it the laptop was on, immediately replace the hard drive whether you see issues or not. It is a no brainer that some part of the drive is damaged. No laptop is designed to with stand this type of shock with the hard drive spinning. As far as the keyboard itself, it would have to have a direct hit in the fall to get damaged. This is an area of the hardware that is very durable and does not break unless liguid is spilled on it. Lastly, the touch pad gets alot of use and is integrated into the bus with the keyboard if the buttons are well used I would replace it as it anyway. The NC6400 can take up to 4GB of ram and the CPU is upgrade capable. I'd think its worth the investment.

Well, with a sudden impact such as the laptop hitting the floor, I'd suspect that something may have gotten a tad bit loose. Could be memory, an internal cable connector, cpu... Without somebody actually opening it up and examining your laptop it would be just guessing and speculation.

Most likely when you dropped the computer the shock caused a solder on the keyboard - computer interface to go bad imitating what is called a "cold solder." Take it to a hardware shop to fix - chances are they have seen this problem before.

Sorry to be so long in replying, but here goes(at last).
First a big "Thank You!" to all who made time to respond with some great suggestions.
I ran lots of scans, as mentioned before, to no avail.
So I pulled off the keyboard, checked the plug. It looked fine, though I unplugged it, re-inserted the plug and tried typing again, with no positive effect.
While looking at the back of the keyboard I did find what appeared to be debris contamination showing. The result, I think, of a recently acquired bad habit of eating near my open laptop.
I ordered and installed a new keyboard and all those troubles have gone away.
Thank you again to all who took valuable time to offer suggestions

Plug in an external USB keyboard, use it, and see if the PC goes rogue once a day. Sounds keyboard-related to me.