Laptop strangness ?

Malski

Have you tried rolling back the driver?

KeithP

Having read all the above, I am struggling to understand what the OP's problem has to do with Money Saving?

fwor

KeithP wrote: »

Having read all the above, I am struggling to understand what the OP's problem has to do with Money Saving?

Errr... He wants to save money by fixing it himself, rather than paying someone else to?

TonyLisaP

Install XP, boot up in safemode, goto control panel, system, hardware. Uninstall the keyboard and reboot. See what happens.

banger9365

what model is your acer laptop to see if we can find the driver for you, like i said it has to be the driver not the bios if it works with linux and the other stuff

Jon_01

Thanks to everyone for their help, I've found the problem...

Reflashed the bios, no change btw (and uninstalled the kb driver, same).

Turns out it was the battery !!
With the batt removed it works fine, with the batt fitted, no keyboard or any other button works.
The battery has a chip (I believe) which tells the system the state of the charge etc. Now I'm guessing that the chips gone down and is sending false data continually, I also think that Acer must use the keyboard controller to process this and all other hardware buttons.
With the processor being deluged with duff info from the battery chip it doesn't have any capacity left to process anything else and I guess windows must poll the keyboard processor far more often than linux or dos ...

At least thats the best theory I can come up with that fits the facts ?