Hi,

I had to copy a few files from an USB stick to the laptop of some old
friends of mine, not computer savvy.

But the machine had surprises.

First, the machine did not want to create a folder for my files, but
after fighting with it and trying 3 methods, I prevailed. Forget it.

I showed how to open one of the files to edit it and... the page was
black and the letters were green. What? They said that one day suddenly
the computer changed to that mode, perhaps a virus. I had to fight with
it a bit more, and then I found it: the desktop was in a high contrast
mode, so changed back to a default theme. Page is now white and black
letters.

Back to editing.

The last surprise is that some keys would not respond unless pressed
three times. Just three times. ctrl-v for instance (explains why I could
not copy my files with copy paste). Several keys, did not explore which.
One key, the 'u' would not respond at all. He said that some keys like
'm' would not respond, which can be hardware, but taking exactly three
presses to respond sounds very weird.

Does that sound familiar?

I think the machine was an Asus, and I assumed windows 10. Office 2010.

Unfortunately, I am at the end of my stay, or I could investigate more.
Even if you guys come with a good idea, maybe I will not be able to test
or repair, too little time left.

Even so I'm curious. Three times? Huh?

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 11/15/2021 7:12 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I had to copy a few files from an USB stick to the laptop of some old
> friends of mine, not computer savvy.
>
> But the machine had surprises.
>
> First, the machine did not want to create a folder for my files, but
> after fighting with it and trying 3 methods, I prevailed. Forget it.
>
> I showed how to open one of the files to edit it and... the page was
> black and the letters were green. What? They said that one day suddenly
> the computer changed to that mode, perhaps a virus. I had to fight with
> it a bit more, and then I found it: the desktop was in a high contrast
> mode, so changed back to a default theme. Page is now white and black
> letters.
>
> Back to editing.
>
> The last surprise is that some keys would not respond unless pressed
> three times. Just three times. ctrl-v for instance (explains why I could
> not copy my files with copy paste). Several keys, did not explore which.
> One key, the 'u' would not respond at all. He said that some keys like
> 'm' would not respond, which can be hardware, but taking exactly three
> presses to respond sounds very weird.
>
> Does that sound familiar?
>
> I think the machine was an Asus, and I assumed windows 10. Office 2010.
>
> Unfortunately, I am at the end of my stay, or I could investigate more.
> Even if you guys come with a good idea, maybe I will not be able to test
> or repair, too little time left.
>
> Even so I'm curious. Three times? Huh?
>

That pattern does not ring a bell.

If I was there, it would be Device Manager or devcon (command line version),
and a look at the UpperFilter/LowerFilter on the keyboard. To meddle
with a character stream, a filter driver is an excellent means.
On one occasion, Microsoft released a driver that had no proper PNP
detection in the INF, and the stupid thing was binding to everything
in sight... and knocking out keyboards entirely. That's an example of
the power of unleashed filter drivers.

Filter drivers can be stacked, and have "assigned altitudes" when
they are registered with Microsoft. This helps them stack above
one another, so the "effluent" is handled properly. Reversing the
altitude might result in incorrect filtering.

People have also attempted to meddle with the CDROM filter
driver, they selected the keyboard and mouse values by mistake,
and screwed them up, instead of correcting some CDROM problem.

You can roll back drivers to a depth of 1. That means, if you
stupidly installed some damaged goods, in Device Manager, you
can "go back one" and see if the previous driver is better.
But this is not an infinite Undo, and you only get to do that
the one time. Which is a rather limiting limit.

Paul

Carlos E. R. wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I had to copy a few files from an USB stick to the laptop of some old
> friends of mine, not computer savvy.
>
> But the machine had surprises.
>
> First, the machine did not want to create a folder for my files, but
> after fighting with it and trying 3 methods, I prevailed. Forget it.
>
> I showed how to open one of the files to edit it and... the page was
> black and the letters were green. What? They said that one day suddenly
> the computer changed to that mode, perhaps a virus. I had to fight with
> it a bit more, and then I found it: the desktop was in a high contrast
> mode, so changed back to a default theme. Page is now white and black
> letters.
>
> Back to editing.
>
> The last surprise is that some keys would not respond unless pressed
> three times. Just three times. ctrl-v for instance (explains why I could
> not copy my files with copy paste). Several keys, did not explore which.
> One key, the 'u' would not respond at all. He said that some keys like
> 'm' would not respond, which can be hardware, but taking exactly three
> presses to respond sounds very weird.
>
> Does that sound familiar?
>
> I think the machine was an Asus, and I assumed windows 10. Office 2010.
>
> Unfortunately, I am at the end of my stay, or I could investigate more.
> Even if you guys come with a good idea, maybe I will not be able to test
> or repair, too little time left.
>
> Even so I'm curious. Three times? Huh?
>
It's been a while since I've seen a similar key-press symptom.
Iirc it was on a Keytronic. The 'A' and 'S' key only worked when pressed
on the rt side, the 'L' on the left side.
After watching the person type, all I could gather and still not certain
to this day was the user's hammer type approach to smacking the key.

The only keyboard issues I've seen recently are from older boards where
the letters have disappeared from years of use.

With keyboards today, I would lean to hardware or just plain old
wear(maybe over a long time even from heavy handed typists).

--
....w¡ñ§±¤ñ

Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>
>
> The last surprise is that some keys would not respond unless pressed
> three times. Just three times. ctrl-v for instance (explains why I could
> not copy my files with copy paste). Several keys, did not explore which.
> One key, the 'u' would not respond at all. He said that some keys like
> 'm' would not respond, which can be hardware, but taking exactly three
> presses to respond sounds very weird.
>
> Does that sound familiar?

Nope. If it was all keyskeys behaving the same I'd suspect some sort of
accessibility feature or really wierd (joke?) keyboard driver. Given that
some keys don't work at all it points very much to hardware failure.

> I think the machine was an Asus, and I assumed windows 10. Office 2010.
>
> Unfortunately, I am at the end of my stay, or I could investigate more.
> Even if you guys come with a good idea, maybe I will not be able to test
> or repair, too little time left.
>
> Even so I'm curious. Three times? Huh?
>

On 16/11/2021 09.25, Chris wrote:
> Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The last surprise is that some keys would not respond unless pressed
>> three times. Just three times. ctrl-v for instance (explains why I could
>> not copy my files with copy paste). Several keys, did not explore which.
>> One key, the 'u' would not respond at all. He said that some keys like
>> 'm' would not respond, which can be hardware, but taking exactly three
>> presses to respond sounds very weird.
>>
>> Does that sound familiar?
>
> Nope. If it was all keyskeys behaving the same I'd suspect some sort of
> accessibility feature or really wierd (joke?) keyboard driver. Given that
> some keys don't work at all it points very much to hardware failure.

I would try with another keyboard, but I don't have any one here. Next
trip, perhaps.

>
>> I think the machine was an Asus, and I assumed windows 10. Office 2010.
>>
>> Unfortunately, I am at the end of my stay, or I could investigate more.
>> Even if you guys come with a good idea, maybe I will not be able to test
>> or repair, too little time left.
>>
>> Even so I'm curious. Three times? Huh?

It is the three times on some keys, repeatedly, which perplexes me.
Yeah, I looked at accessibility options.

Next time I'll bring a spare keyboard. Or boot a Linux live stick to test.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
> On 16/11/2021 09.25, Chris wrote:
>> Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> The last surprise is that some keys would not respond unless pressed
>>> three times. Just three times. ctrl-v for instance (explains why I could
>>> not copy my files with copy paste). Several keys, did not explore which.
>>> One key, the 'u' would not respond at all. He said that some keys like
>>> 'm' would not respond, which can be hardware, but taking exactly three
>>> presses to respond sounds very weird.
>>>
>>> Does that sound familiar?
>>
>> Nope. If it was all keyskeys behaving the same I'd suspect some sort of
>> accessibility feature or really wierd (joke?) keyboard driver. Given that
>> some keys don't work at all it points very much to hardware failure.
>
> I would try with another keyboard, but I don't have any one here. Next
> trip, perhaps.
>
>
>>
>>> I think the machine was an Asus, and I assumed windows 10. Office 2010.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, I am at the end of my stay, or I could investigate more.
>>> Even if you guys come with a good idea, maybe I will not be able to test
>>> or repair, too little time left.
>>>
>>> Even so I'm curious. Three times? Huh?
>
> It is the three times on some keys, repeatedly, which perplexes me.
> Yeah, I looked at accessibility options.
>
> Next time I'll bring a spare keyboard. Or boot a Linux live stick to test.

A linux live stick would be a good test and is much more portable ;)