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Solved Peculiar issue

hughlle

Super Moderator
Staff member
Windows 10 on one of my machines has suddenly gone a bit mad. I've checked for spyware, viruses etc, done full refresh, nothing. It's been fine for about 6 months, and all of a sudden this happened and will not sort itself out.

1. The mouse. Double clicking on a folder opens the properties page. If I right click and select open, it opens in a new windows. I can just about manage with this..

2. Keyboard. Only two keys work (3 and 4) and when pressed they results in the euro sign and an 'e' with an accent. I've swapped out kayboards, changed usb ports, uninstalled drivers, scanned for hardware updates, done windows update, you name it.

Basically the computer is completely unusable. Booting into bios or linux shows that it isn't a hardware issue.

Any thoughts?
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Full Refresh? Was that with Remove Everything?

Just out of curiosity have you done SFC /scannow
or DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
see ... https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...er-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system

Delete all partitions & Clean Install.
Deleting the partitions ensures (as best possible) removing any lurking nefarious actors.
Nuke it from space it's the only way to be sure.
 
Last edited:
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hughlle

Super Moderator
Staff member
Solved. The damndest thing.

Turned out to be the microsoft ergonomic keyboard. It was working absolutely perfectly as it always has, and then poof, borked. Works 0.0001% of the time, but doesn't the rest of the time. Don't quite understand the how and why's, but if I plug it into any computer, it'll block the ability to type properly, only allowing an "á". What's more though, once the keyboard has been plugged in, even once removed, the same will occur with every other kyaboard you try using on that computer. If I were a more nefarious fellow, I'd run into a local library and plug it into every computer there and raise hell :D
 

Russ

Active Member
Hugh --
Glad to hear you solved it. If that keyboard were mine, I would give it the "throw" test: defined as how far back into the woods can I throw it.
Take care,
Russ
 
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