Help hijacked keyboard!

kittykat500

My laptop keyboard has a mind of its own. It types the following 'ujhnm67y' in the address bar on its own and does a right click. It makes typing anything virtually impossible. I have re-installed windows in an effort to wipe out any viruses and have run Norton anti-virus. However the problem persists! Anyone know what's going on?

omni

Hi,

I would suggest disabling the laptops keyboard and plugging in an external one to see if this solves the problem. This would help idnetify if it was a software or hardware problem.

HTH

Omni

RACHIE77

Sounds like a virus to me, you need to run some more virus software, start by using the Lavasoft 'Ad-aware' software (u can download it here) and then report back if it does any good

sleepless_saver

I had the same problem, and it was a faulty keyboard - try Omni's suggestion!

Splend

Three things that I can think of off the top of my head:

1. Num Lock? One of the commonest problems many users have with laptops (especially when they occasionally connect up an external keyboard) is for the laptop's num-lock to be left on...something that's not normally 'on' for a laptop. It'll mean that when typing, you'll suddenly find unexpected characters appearing. Sounds silly, I know, but you'll be amazed how many times I get complaints about it from users.

2. Virus / Trojan - unlikely, to be honest. There are key-loggers and trojans that can supposedly hijack keys in this way, but they're so rare I would be very surprised.

3. Keyboard itself. That's possible with a laptop. Normally, laptop keyboards are replacible units that attach to the latpop itself via a small little ribbon cable that connected to the laptop via a "clamp-like" device. It's possible that you could have dirt or sticky residue (coke? ) under the keys or even a poor connection between the keyboard and the laptop (that ribbon cable).

Personally I'd check the num-lock first (as that's the quickest), then I'd start carefully cleaning the keyboard to see if I've got any sticky keys. There's no obvious answer, but it's something to try first.

RACHIE77

So how does the keyboard do a right click?

wolfman

RACHIE77 wrote:

So how does the keyboard do a right click?

SHIFT + F10

RACHIE77

wolfman wrote:

SHIFT + F10

But is it normal for a keyboard with sticky keys to be able to do the exact same keyboard sequence every time, to click in an address bar every time, and then finish it off with SHFT + F10??

It was just the fact that the sequence sounds like some sort of malware to me rather than a sticky keyboard?? If it was a sticky keyboard surely you would get more like dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd? or something?

Unless you are saying its the software malfunction for the keyboard? I just thought it would more likely be a virus that is instructing the PC to follow commands as the problem seems a bit precise, or I could be reading the problem wrong??

kittykat500

Thanks for all your help. I uninstalled google toolbar and installed adaware. It found Alexa malware? and quarantined it. Hopefully this was the source of the problem as the keyboard is behaving itself at the moment!

RACHIE77

Glad you got it sorted, I think Alexa malware was the one the hijacked my PC before, its a real annoyance huh!

kittykat500

Yeah, especially as I spent all last night re-installing Windows XP when all I had to do was re-install Adaware!