Keyboard lockups

satchmo

Every so often, at seemingly random times (although it's always when I'm playing a 3D shooter of some sort), my keyboard completely locks up and refuses to do anything else. The game continues to run, I can still use the mouse to look around, but the keyboard just stops responding no matter what key I press.

I recently replaced my machine. Practically everything is new, except the monitor and the keyboard, which I kept from my old Dell Dimension. This used to happen on my old machine too, but I figured it would go away. Seeing as it didn't, the only conclusion I can come to is that I need a new keyboard.

Has this happened to anyone else? Does anyone know why it's happening? And why only when I'm playing 3D shooters? It's a right pain in the ass when I realise I haven't saved for the last 15 minutes, and I have to reboot the machine...

Hobbes

wire might be damaged or the keyboard dirty. If you know how to clean a keyboard open it and clean it. Otherwise buy a new keyboard.

Bard

If the internals of the face of the keyboard are dirty (or... erm... hairy), could that also cause a keyboard to lock up on booting? - in that all 3 of the lights (Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock) go on and STAY on on startup, won't go off and the rest of the keys are unresponsive, but the computer doesn't report a "keyboard not present" error...

this happens occasionally for me...

anyone?

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satchmo

Now that you mention it Hobbes, I did spill beer all over my keyboard recently....