IT = Part-time Detective

This past week I received a call from one of our staff members who reported that every key he pressed ANY key on his keyboard he heard a beep. He couldn’t type since everything displayed as strange characters and the problem didn’t go away after rebooting.

When arrived he showed me the symptoms he had described. I first thought that it had something to do with the laptop docking station, and removed the laptop from the dock… All was well.  So next we deleted the hardware profile and rebooted the laptop… and all was well.. for about 30 seconds and the problem started again.  None of the keys were stuck in the down position, but it appeared that the control key was stuck.  At the login page you could press alt-del and the login page displayed, if you pressed ctrl-alt-del the machine just beeped.

So for a few minutes I thought about the problem and suggested we get an external keyboard to see if that allowed us to use the laptop.  Quickly the user says “I have a keyboard right here under my desk, and its even wireless”.  On a hunch I suggested he press the ctrl key on the wireless keyboard while I press the alt-del keys on the laptop… sure enough the login prompt displayed.  The wireless keyboard had been left on and ‘connected’ to the laptop while under the desk.  Sometime during the day a small cardboard box fell over under the desk pressing the ctrl key.

Lesson learned: remove your batteries from your wireless keyboard when you aren’t using it!

{This Story was shared with the permission of G. Webb}