Weird Things happening while typing....

Judas · Mar 7, 2008, 04:08 PM

Ok i got this issue that i've never seen before..

and i somewhat replicated it on another laptop that is the exact same model..

anyways.. the laptops are Acer Aspire 5715z..... they have a bit of a multi language keyboards... windows vista... and i've gone through on both and removed everything to do with any other keyboard language... basically making english canadian the only option period.

heres the problem that's occuring...

I've moved about 6 or 7 of these laptops myself.... haven't had one person complain about the issue or bring it up..

however i recently moved one out and the customer has emediately called me about this issue cropping up while trying to input all her contacts into it.

What happens is that while starting to punch in the information in each field.... random.. out of the blue.. the cursor will jump down to another field.... not even the next one.. hell it'll skip right to the bottom occasionally..... or sometimes it'll jump to the middle of a sentence and start typing again without any reason...

another is writing a new email..... (windows mail)... you'll be typing along.. and out of nowhere.... the contact list will come up.... or a new create email will pop up.... or some other window related to settings or who knows what will occur completely randomly...

at first i figured it was just accidental hitting of the keys... the wrong keys... or a combination of keys.

But it's random... completely baffling me beyond reason...

You can be going for pages. and then nothing but these weird things start happening...

Anyone have even a remote clue as wtf is happening.... i've already sent an email off to acer...

swimtech · Mar 7, 2008, 04:20 PM

Considered unplugging the internal keyboard and plugging in an external USB keyboard as a test? Probably wouldn't take 15 minutes...

Judas · Mar 7, 2008, 04:41 PM

actually leaving the orginal keyboard plugged in and on.... right now we are using just a standard usb keyboard to see what is happening..

and so.. far..

nothing out of the ordinary is happening.. leaving me to beleive that the laptop keyboard has some interesting odd keyboard configurations that are causing havoc....

mkk · Mar 7, 2008, 05:05 PM

What about typing on the laptop keyboard with the touchpad turned off/disabled?

**kris23** · Mar 7, 2008, 07:34 PM

your wrist isnt touching the touch pad or other similar device right? thats what happens to me.... alot man

Tipstaff · Mar 7, 2008, 09:24 PM

I've sold a few of these ones myself, and this is a first for that laptop. I have, however, seen it with other units before.

When you type on the laptop keyboard almost everyone rests their wrists on the area just below the keyboard, and that just happens to be where the touchpad, left/right mouse control buttons, and flat center mouse stick reside. The thing isn't that you might be touching those components, it's that your wrists are resting on the casing, or that when you are typing you are putting pressure on the keyboard, which in turn puts pressure on the casing. I have seen instances where putting the slightest pressure on the casing around those components can trigger those same components. This is either a defect in those pieces, either due to a loose connection/wire, bad motherboard trace, or that they are just plain old defective parts.

It might be worth disconnecting (either physically, or via device manager/bios) each piece one at a time (mouse stick, touch pad) until you find out which piece is giving the problem. Too bad I don't have one in front of me, otherwise I could tell you which pieces to disable in device manager. Something else worth trying is putting pressure on different spots of the casing around those components to see if anything gets triggered. As it stands though, I'd call Acer as it's almost a given it's either a defect, or some sort of driver issue with those units, and I'm almost certain Acer knows about this issue.

Funny thing about those multilingual laptops of Acer is that I personally hate those keyboards. They should never have decided to do this version of the keyboard. The keyboard on the multilingual version has a very small left Shift key (original version, and non mulitlingual version has a full sized left Shift key), and I find I'm always hitting the key next to it all the time (too sick to remember which key atm). Drives me nuts trying to type on it.

Judas · Mar 7, 2008, 11:13 PM

lol tipstaff.. i utterly hate the keyboard design to.... but the laptop themselves are very excellent..

actually the pressure testing thing is what i had done...

I also tried multiple methods of trying to force the same thing.. but nothing ever happened..

After this customer was able to reproduce the same problem on another exact laptop..... and another... 3 in a row.. that's just plain out either a full blown model defect... or she HAS to be doing it....

Either way... i've got one of the laptops she was able to trigger to do it within a matter of seconds here.. and i've been using it for hours.... i'm pretty bad at putting preasure on the keyboard i think.. maybe not.. but i can't get it to reproduce wildly.....

Now i've got to figure out if i should inform her of the facts at hand.. and then to offer an alternative laptop.... i'm not sure at this point..... I haven't been feeling well... perhaps when i get some sleep and clear my head again.. i'll have things straightened out...

but before i do anything.. i'll try disableing the specific components.. be it the touch pad and the mouse button on the laptop itself.....

Tipstaff · Mar 8, 2008, 02:11 AM

The only other thing I can think of is that she's accidentally hitting one of Vistas many shortcut combos. Things such as the language control shortcuts (CTRL-SHIFT and CTRL-SPACE BAR). At the very least try turning off things like Sticky Keys (normally off by default), and turn off anything under "Ease of Access" under the Control Panel.

What I find interesting is that in Windows Mail CTRL+N opens up or posts a new email, yet CTRL+SHIFT+B opens up the contact list. The commonality here is the CTRL key. However, that doesn't explain why the mouse would suddenly go into a different field except that CTRL+TAB allows you to move forward through fields, although it'd do it one at a time, and not several at a time.

BTW, if the default input language was set to English Canada, try changing it back to English US to see if that helps.

Man, now I'm going to have to try this out next time I get one for a client just to see this in action.

Judas · Mar 8, 2008, 10:56 AM

actually ctrlshift c will bring up the contacts as well...

I'm going to try the setting back to english US..... but that SHOULDN'T make a difference....

sticky keys are off.. and the last i checked.. the ease of access keys were disabled...

and there is nothing under regional settings... just the us keyboard and "in between langauages switch".. which obviously can't be removed...