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Hi,
I have one of these keyboards at home and at the office, in the office I have the whole desktop including the mouse, but at home I only have the keyboard. I upgraded from the Microsoft Ergo 4000 keyboard that I've used for many years. So far I'm enjoying the keyboard but I have an issue that I was wondering if there was a way to fix?
The one at work doesn't seem to have this problem although I use the keyboards differently, at work it's mainly for typing and coding, at home I use it for typing and gaming.
The issue:
The Shift, Alt, and Control buttons when pressed numerous times seem to stick even when they aren't being pressed. For example if I have 3 out of 5 files I want move from one folder to another, if I push and hold control, select the files in the 1st, 3rd, and 5th position with my mouse, after I drag them to the other folder and release the control button, if I click on the 2 remaining files in the original folder, both files are selected even though I'm not holding control down so you'd expect only 1 to be selected.
Same issue happens in games where I've bound hotkeys to use modifiers such as shift, control, or alt. If I'm alternating between 1 and shift-1, eventually just pressing 1 will result in shift-1 being registered. I initially thought that maybe stickey keys was being turned on but I've confirmed that is not the case.
Both cases are resolved by simply pressing the button that's sticking and that fixes it, but when using multiple modifiers, it's hard to determine which one is sticking so it usually results in pressing each of the buttons, alt, control, and shift once until it's back to normal.
Additional Information:
None of these problems seem apparent on my work desktop. I'm using windows 8.1 Pro at home and windows 7 pro at work. At work, my receiver is plugged into a usb switch as I use it for 2 pcs, the switch is 2 ft away from my keyboard position in line of sight.
At home, the usb receiver is plugged into the back of my desktop under my desk, out of line of site? (could this be a problem?)
Any ideas you have to solve either of these issues would be most appreciated.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I've found a solution:
Open Device Manager
Under Human Interface Devices, locate the Microsoft Hardware USB Keyboard
Right click, Properties
Power Management Tab, Uncheck allow the computer to turn off this device to save power
That fixed it for me, no need to uninstall/change drivers.
I'm having a somewhat similar issue, though its intermittent but It often happens when I'm typing fast.
What happens when I type fast?
Either the caps lock is pressed or the shift lock engages.
Solution:
load the onscreen keyboard.
when the blue scroll wheel (which only appears when you mouse over the onscreen keyboard) stops turning, the shift key issue is fixed. Or the shift keys are both lit up in which case you select the right Shift key on the physical keyboard or on the onscreen keyboard and it gets fixed, or the Caps Lock key is pressed and you simply press it again on either keyboard to turn it off. If I try to do this while the onscreen keyboard is not displayed, I run into the issue of the keyboards doing the opposite of each other. So when I press the physical keyboard again it says the caps lock is off, but acts as if it is on and vice versa.
The issue of course is that it happens so often that it is cutting down my productivity. Honestly just taking the time to read through 6 pages and see if there is a solution and then adding my experience is probably more than my employer would appreciate. :)
Edit:
Now that I found this group of users I'm excited about continued testing of the issues. I'm running the onscreen keyboard now full-time to see how it works and ran across something very interesting. During my typing the Shift Lock came on. This is signified by both shift keys on the onscreen keyboard lighting up. When I click on the right hand Shift key on my physical keyboard it seemingly turns off the shift lock by the highlighted keys going back to normal and it turns the capital letters off, but if I try to type any punctuation it renders it as if the shift keys are still on. For example hitting the following key equals the following response:
period = greater than
comma = less than
forward slash = question mark
etc
When I close the onscreen keyboard it automatically reverts the physical keyboard to normal function.
I press C with my left index finger and "E" with the left middle finger. I never learnedto touch-type, I just... did it. Maybe that's why I don't do it by the book.
Same here, I always hit c with my index finger, and hit x with my middle finger, and z with my ring finger, just more comfortable to do it that way...lol. Feels awkward to do it the normal way...just how I learned I guess.
E, D, and C should all be hit using your middle finger so if you're typing properly, you should never be able to push them both at the same time using the same finger.
Yeah. Unfortunately, for the sequence "CHCe" (f*ck, again!), I press C with my left index finger and "E" with the left middle finger. I never learnedto touch-type, I just... did it. Maybe that's why I don't do it by the book.
@GarethMoore:
as for the two keys repeating, I cannot reproduce this. If I press A, S and D at once, I get: asdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsd... oh... ok, so I just reproduced it. UNTIL NOW, I got only "d" repeated.
So we have 4 issues now ;-)
Third issue: the keyboard seem to be unable to process 3 keys at once
I can't reproduce your exact issue, but I can produce an exceptionally bizarre effect involving 3 keys. On any normal keyboard if you press multiple keys at once in, say, Word or similar only one will be 'last' and only one will repeat.
On this keyboard, sometimes if you press THREE keys simultaneously (e.g. A, S and D) then TWO of them keep repeating, like this: asdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsd... etc Other times you don't get any output at all - not even a single letter.
This particular issue could be a hardware issue with how it reads the keyboard, but the driver should prevent it oscillating between two keys like that.
Anyway, it's less annoying than the sticking keys issue...
