Thanks for all very much for the advice.
After a bit of trial and error..
The answer was ....sticky keys!
Thanks again.
=================
"Paul" wrote in message
Anyone got advice on this one?
...grandson has a new windows 8 pc on which he plays games..mostly
Minecraft = plenty of repeated keyboard action I believe!
The keyboard now does not function, but here is the unusual thing, he can
type in his password to get into Windows but then once in the keys don't
have any effect.
So this am I swapped keyboards..same, tried plugging the keyboards in the
various front and back usb outlets again without success.
What could this be?
Thanks.
We would have to be Minecraft players, to understand this question
Keyboards consist of regular keys, and modifier keys. Shift and
Shift Lock are examples of modifiers. So are Control and Alt.
At one time, modifier keys were handled separately by the keyboard
controller chip. It's possible they're all scanned the same way now,
which makes the handling of the keys a bit more tricky.
If Minecraft uses a lot of modifier key activity, that would be
different than a password entry, where passwords are typed
without even shift pressed say.
Another aspect to Windows, is the security space things happen in.
Some people have their computer set up, to require pressing
control-alt-delete before entering a password. The purpose
of Windows asking for that, is as a means of putting the password
box in an environment, that other software can't "sniff" or forge.
So that too represents a possible difference between a password
entry box and Minecraft game controls.
Now, the next issue is "mapping". Games have keyboard maps.
For example, the surface of my A and S keys are worn down,
and I think those are "left" and "right". I can go into my
favorite game, and change the binding. Now, say I have an
Alzheimers moment, go to play my game, and suddenly I notice
I can't move my character "left" or "right". I press A or S
and nothing happens. That's because, the day before, I
decided to enter the Options panel in the game, and change
the binding. I think I did actually change a binding in the
game, because I was accidentally hitting the sequence for
"spring" or "jump" when trying to enter something else.
*******
The password entry is pretty conclusive evidence it isn't hardware.
You can boot a Linux LiveCD and verify keyboard operation in there.
You might look for a "keyboard application". Some of those draw
a picture of the keyboard, and the key image changes state, when
you press the matching key on the keyboard. That can be used
as a source of proof that the keyboard works as an input device.
But figuring out what has happened to Windows, that's going
to be a tough one. Maybe it's some kind of keylogger or
filter driver, inserted into the keyboard stack. You could
try "devcon" and use it to list all the filter drivers. And
see if something is installed, which does not belong there.
32 bit devcon is easy to find. The 64 bit version, that's on
some stupidly huge Microsoft download. They couldn't just put
them on the same web page - no, that would be too easy.
(The Devcon web page has an x86 32 bit driver and an
Itanium 64 bit driver. Itanium is HP servers. No x86 64 bit
version on the same page.)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc776272(v=WS.10).aspx
devcon stack *
On my system, this is the keyboard entry from that command.
ACPI\PNP0303\4&23F9C1E3&0
Name: Standard PS/2 Keyboard
Setup Class: {4d36e96b-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318} Keyboard
Upper class filters:
kbdclass <--- presumably, this is normal
Controlling service:
i8042prt
This is an example of the kind of instructions you get, for
finding the devcon64 needed for a 64 bit system. (I renamed
mine to that, so I could keep track of it later
) And when
they give instructions like this, you never know whether the
same version of WDK or SDK is still available for download or not.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com...ion-of-device-console-utility-devcon-exe.aspx
If the installed OS is 32 bit, then it'll be easier to find. The
old version from long ago (2003 or so).
HTH,
Paul
