Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop - Sticky Key Issue

Anonymous
2013-12-05T21:55:50+00:00

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.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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Anonymous
2014-06-12T18:57:09+00:00

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.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-10-26T03:42:51+00:00

    Edited...

    Turning off the power setting did solve the 5 second sticky key issue, but when I held the Ctrl key, for example, longer - like 10 seconds - the problem is still there.

    Changing the power setting seems to increase the delay before the keys start sticking again.  Anyway it is a workable solution - Many thanks!

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-10-01T05:45:46+00:00

    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.

    Many thanks!

    This issue has always made me annoying.

    And now totally solved!

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-09-29T16:16:41+00:00

    I have a USB hub with 'connected' LEDs.  The LED for this device dongle would turn off after about 5-10 seconds of disuse.  Holding down a modifier (CTRL,ALT,SHIFT) would cause the light to flicker off briefly every 10 seconds.

    Changing this setting causes the dongle LED to remain lit, which means the dongle remains powered up.  I wonder if the unpowered dongle 'forgets' the keystate and does not report a release? 

    I would think the keyboard itself would remember states, but the 'reset' seems to cause the problem, so who knows.

    The keyboard itself does not remember anything, it is just a dumb box of switches that sends any changes to the receiver. But with your observation of the hub LEDs, I now have a theory as to what happens. This is all pure conjecture, but it seems plausible to me. It also does not contribute in the least to solving the problem, so feel free to stop reading here.

    Let's assume there are three "layers" of drivers involved, USB (including power management), Keyboard and Input (not really a device driver, but the OS layer just above). There is probably a separate HID layer between USB and Keyboard, but that doesn't do anything but dispatch events to the appropriate device class driver.

    At the start of our scenario, the Ctrl key is down, but nothing else happens on the keyboard. When the USB device (the receiver) has not had any activity for ten seconds, PM makes it "inactive", a state in which it is still powered and can communicate with the actual keyboard, but where the OS does not poll it for input events anymore.

    USB signals this inactivation to Keyboard. Keyboard then clears its internal key state, to prevent any keys from repeating endlessly that were down when the device went away. *But* Keyboard only tells Input if a "normal" key is "released" by this, not modifiers like Ctrl, so as far as Input is aware, the key is still down.

    Then the actual Ctrl key is released, the keyboard radios this to the receiver, the receiver triggers an interrupt, and USB "reactivates" the device, resumes polling, picks up the "Ctrl released" event, and

    forwards it up to Keyboard. Keyboard looks at it and says to itself, "This key is now up, but (checks internal state) it was up before," (because the state was reset when the device was deactivated) "so this event is clearly bogus and I'll just throw it away."

    Result: Input still has the key down, and there is no way short of pressing and releasing it again on the physical keyboard to get the driver stack to acknowledge that.

    If that is close to what actually happens, it leaves two questions:

    1. Why are modifier keys treated differently from "normal" ones? (After all, if you hold down "A", it stops repeating after ten seconds.) Probable answer: Because "A" *can* repeat, but a modifier is just turned on and off, it does not repeat while it is down.
    2. Is MS going to fix this (e.g. by logically "releasing" all keys, including the modifiers?

    I wonder if GetKeyState()/GetAsyncKeyState() show this different behavior, where "A" goes logically "up" after ten seconds, but Ctrl does not. Something to try tomorrow.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-09-29T14:25:30+00:00

    I was about to report what I was seeing, when I came to this fix. It also works for me.

    Thank you!

    I have a USB hub with 'connected' LEDs.  The LED for this device dongle would turn off after about 5-10 seconds of disuse.  Holding down a modifier (CTRL,ALT,SHIFT) would cause the light to flicker off briefly every 10 seconds.

    Changing this setting causes the dongle LED to remain lit, which means the dongle remains powered up.  I wonder if the unpowered dongle 'forgets' the keystate and does not report a release? 

    I would think the keyboard itself would remember states, but the 'reset' seems to cause the problem, so who knows.

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