Does ANYONE experience the random-keyboard-dying insanity?

RSI

Diamond Member
May 22, 2000
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Am I alone here? Back in the day of the Cyrix and AMD K6-2's, I had a socket 7 system with an M2-300 @ 262.5. After that I "upgraded" (wow, never knew upgrading decreased performance) to a K6-2/350 and then upgraded to a K6-3+/450@600. Anyhow.. the mobo I had was the FIC VA-503+. I know lots of people hate/hated VIA (the mobo uses VIA MVP3 chipset), but it was fast and worked well for me. Except for one thing, I'm not sure what to attribute the problem to. Every now and then, sometimes happening more often than other times, the keyboard randomly dies. As in ... you're about to start typing something, you hit a key, nothing happens. You un-plug the keyboard, you plug it back in, and the keyboard magically works! Do you have any idea how frustrating that can be when it happens several times per day, or once and then again 2 minutes later? :|

Could it be a faulty ps/2 port? bad motherboard? bad keyboard? other than that everything in the system including keyboard worked perfectly...

one thing I noticed, is that sometimes when the keyboard died, if I was in win98, I could hit alt-ctrl-del and still get the menu, even though nothing worked when i tried to type...

at this point I'm on a tbird system and I have the ECS K7S5A. Do you see a pattern? I paid $125 for my VA-503+ at the time, and I paid $120 for my K7S5A ($99 these days). Cheap motherboards - bad PS/2 ports?? I never had a problem with the mouse. And YES I am plugging in the mouse where it says to plug in the mouse, and keyboard where it says to plug in keyboard - just in case you were thinking I was plugging them in the wrong place ;)

But seriously... if it happened before and happens now, could it be two weird mobos or a bad keyboard? All my keys are perfect, the keyboard is nice, clean, never spilled anything on it... I don't damage my computer hardware or anything either. I'm careful when I work in the PC. the keyboard is a Lite-On. reputable enough company aren't they? I paid an insane $80 for this keyboard.. store ripped me off bad.

Ideas anyone? I would REALLY appreciate if I could get some comments on this.

Thanks,

-RSI
 

Bartman39

Elite Member | For Sale/Trade
Jul 4, 2000
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Might be worth getting a cheap USB keyboard...?

I had a problem the other night with a keyboard that just quit working and after finaly pulling all my hair out and telling it some choice words I just happened to notice I had installed the cooling fan on the HS with it pulling the air off of it... DOH...! Flipped the fan and poof...! Problems vanished... :) But I recently got a couple of USB keyboards and ya gotta love`em... :)
 

RSI

Diamond Member
May 22, 2000
7,281
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Well I know for sure I have not installed anything incorrectly, as my computer has been running without a reboot for quite some time now. :D And it has been rock stable... never a problem running any programs or games that I can run (bad video card.. so I don't run many games).

anyway I g2g.. bbl.

-RSI
 

ST4RCUTTER

Platinum Member
Feb 13, 2001
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I used to get this every once in a while on my ABIT KT7-Raid. I keep my computer running for for a month or more at a time and this would occasionally happen. I'd have to uplug the keyboard and plug it back in--blamo-- worked fine for another month or two. My new Shuttle AK31 does this about once a week. It seems to settle out once the system has been running for a while though and it's been happening less and less. No idea yet as to why this happens.
 

RSI

Diamond Member
May 22, 2000
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It's so damn annoying. I don't know whether to blame the cheap mobos or the keyboard, cause both mobos I had were cheap and I have the same keyboard. :eek:

Anyway... If I can, i'll get a new keyboard, and see if it works. This never happens on the P83 downstairs. :Q

-RSI
 

Davegod

Platinum Member
Nov 26, 2001
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used to get similar problem on old p200mmx, some crappy PINE mobo... one thing i noticed was it didnt happen unless i was online. im using the same keyboard and have not had teh problem on this new comp. I have to say though that the common denominatior for the poster is the keyboard, buy some cheapo KB and see if you get same problem; then youll know what to do :)
 

jshrieve

Member
Nov 14, 2001
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Haha, I have a similar but different problem.

Some mornings when I start using the computer, only certain keys on the keyboard work. Like 60% of the keys just do nothing when I hit them, but the other 40% work fine.

Usually I just keep hammering all the keys for about 30 sec and eventually the rest of the keys start working.
It seems like it does it when it's really cold in the mornings, but that might just be a coincidence.

Either way, it only happens once every couple weeks and goes away so fast, I don't bother with anything.
Has happened with two diferent mobos, I figure it's the keyboard. Cheap $7 one.
 

nortexoid

Diamond Member
May 1, 2000
4,096
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RSI, what operating system are u using?...win2k, u dont' say?

my keyboards do the exact same thing, but ONLY in win2k...every other OS they function properly...so it isn't a question of the flakiness of the ps/2 port, mobo, keyboard, etc. alone, it's mostly the fault of the OS or native OS keybaord drivers...

try installing a different keyboard driver or something....

also, does your keyboard fail in DOS ever?...i doubt it - at least, mine didn't.