HP laptop with misbehaving keys

[rh71]

Erratic problem on my friend's laptop... the G, H, Backspace keys SOMETIMES don't work on her HP Pavilion N5425. She swears she never eats or drinks near the thing...

HP support tells her:

Before beginning, disconnect the AC Adapter and then remove the battery.

1. Reseat the memory (RAM).
2. Reseat the modem; it is under the floppy drive.
3. While the power is still disconnected, hold the system reset for
about 30 seconds. The small reset hole is on the left side of the notebook
4. If the keys are still not responding, go into diagnostics and run
the advanced test on the keyboard.
* If the test passed, uninstall the keyboard drivers, then
restore or recover the system.

* If the test failed, then the notebook needs to be serviced.

Her friend says the same thing happened to her Dell laptop and she had to have it serviced because it was some kind of short circuit.

Is this a common problem with an easy fix? Or does she have to send it in? I doubt she can do these "test steps" on her own ... but I wanted to know if this is a common thing I can tell her to fix somehow...

Thanks.

 

[jschuk]

You can try cleaning the keyboard by using compressed air and/or brushing it out. Laptop keyboards to wear out or go bad. HP's keyboards are not cheap either. Actually, that one is not too bad, probably about $54.00 after shipping, F2111-60915, or nothing if it is under warranty.