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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.
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Power Management Tab, Uncheck allow the computer to turn off this device to save power
Wow - this works for me too. Thank you!!!
The ironic thing is I had already thought of this before - so there must be another really nasty bug in Windows because you should be able to get the same effect by disabling "USB selective suspend" in Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Power Options -> Edit Plan settings (select 'Change advanced power options') - but I tried this a while back and it had no effect for me. I had read that this fixed problems with a wireless Sony keyboard.
So in summary the problem with this keyboard is that the power management is broken in Windows 8.1 in multiple ways. Windows identifies it as a keyboard in Device Manager so really I think this must be two separate Windows 8.1 power management bugs.
Booting into Safe Mode must disable USB power management and thus also avoids the problem.
I'm definitely eager to see if that solution will work for me. I'll post the results when I get home. How weird is it that it would put the keyboard to sleep while you're typing?
My only guess is that it was meant to avoid depleting the battery of the device (or perhaps the keyboard) if something was sitting on the keys. You would think they could have made it at least a minute, rather than only a few seconds before the timeout occurs.
I'm definitely eager to see if that solution will work for me. I'll post the results when I get home. How weird is it that it would put the keyboard to sleep while you're typing?
