Key board locked up

Hope to get answers before I get banned. Ok I just got a call from a friend his wife use the computter and it locked the key board up when she was useing MS works. he dont know the whole thing as he was at work. What can make that happen? The mouse still works. So I told him about the on screen key board so that he can type his pass words and stuff to hold him over untill we find a fix. He did a virus scan nothing, he also used ad ware I sent him but did not fix it. It is plug in and just stop working in the middle of her useing it. He has Norton's system work's and did a find and fix. It did not help. He took out M$ works but as always no luck. What else is there to do?

Thanks for any help.

Zuriel

How much memory does he have? MS Works is a memory hog big time......

PS: Give us some system details to go with. Then it can be diagnosed a little better.

It sounds like a hardware problem. First step, turn off the computer and unplug the keyboard cable. Check to ensure that the connectors are fine. Plug it back and turn the computer back on. If it still doesn't work after the restart, there may be something wrong the the keyboard. Also, you can try removing the driver from Control Panel | System and let it redetect the keyboard when the computer restarts. If none of those options work, try the keyboard on another computer to see if it works. Also, try a different keyboard on the computer in question to see if it works. It's probably just something with the cable, but you never know. Good luck!

AJ

i would do what avden suggested..i was going to just say make sure the keyboard is still plugged in..one time mine had worked loose and i almost had an anyursym wondering why yet another thing had failed on my computer..hahaha i felt really dumb that it was simply unplugged ,but happy as well that it was still working.hehe goodluck

Sometimes, and I know this is probably a really common, yet stupid problem, I hit the "Key Lock" key on the far right top of my keyboard while I'm playing Diablo II and not paying attention, unfortunately...none of the keys work and when I try to click 1 for a potion, I don't get it and usually die. That might be it...just throwing up another "what if"

I think adven hit it right... sounds like an "is it plugged in?" problem (and yes, they sometimes come loose). Any tension on the cable, etc? Check the drivers to make sure it's not one of those "internet keyboards" that has more spare buttons that most people's home entertainment systems (if it's one of those types that needs extra ones, etc).

Just a long shot but this could, and i stress could, be caused by the box in question being infected with the sub7 trojan

The client box that has infected your box with the server (trojan), has the ability to turn your keyboard off!

See this http://www.commodon.com/threat/threat-sub7.htm on how to check/remove the trojan from your system.

Just a thought

L:L

its not a Dell machine is it? i had a few sometime ago where this happened and was cured by unplugging the keyboard and plugging it in again. this really annoys the users though

Also, most modern BIOS's output when devices are detected...Is he seeing 'Keyboard detected...' "mouse detected', usually this is not very long in the bootup process after it detects the number and types of drives...

If you don't see this, start looking at physical things, bent connectors, bad plug, bad keyboard (try using a different keyboard)...

If you do, then start looking at software things, like memory conflicts, device conflicts (Control Panel->System->Device Manager->Computer

Any conflicts will have a ! by them, also, right click on computer to have a look at your IRQ settings, see if you can't move them around (might require some monkeying around with your BIOS, (if you do this make sure you know what you are doing or you can hose your machine))

Hope this helps,

Neb

PS. I had a dell mouse do the same thing, it would just randomly quit working, wound up having to buy a new one.

This happens to our key boards at work all of the time, just unplug the key board and plug it back in and it should start working

:)

Just a up date so if this happens to someone else they might can try this. The only thing my friend did after making sure his keyboard was pluged in and ran a virus check useing his mouse and on screen key board to do that was just uninstall M$ works and put it back in. Well come to find out he had not up dated his softwere/drivers in mos. Hope that helps and remember to check for updates often.

Thanks for all the help guys/girls

zuriel