Keyboard not working on Dell Inspiron 15 5000 series

MtnSquid.

I have to admit that I was skeptical to try your solution. But after resetting all of Windows and Dell's setting, doing a restore point back a couple days and ultimately, reinstalling Windows to see if that would solve it. Nope. All a waste of time. I was about to order a new keyboard intill I stumbled across your post about 30 minutes ago. 

So, thank you for posting your solution. It fixed my PC's keyboard in a matter of a couple minutes. 

Thanks Again

Did not work. Still I can not find " at symbol )arroba in spanish, and other symbols do not correspond to my key board symbols

Thank you so much for the info. It worked like a charm! I had thought it was irreparable and thought I’d give it one last shot. Saved me a lot of money and grief.

How do I remove the battery? I'm having sticky keys where A, D, and F work, but they only create one integer; if i hold it down, it only creates one A, D, or F. 

But more importantly, how do I remove a battery for the Inspiron 15000?

geegee.creemz,

Click the link below and choose your computer model. Once you have chosen your computer model you can click to download the online manual. The manual provides information for removing/replacing parts.

Dell Drivers, Downloads and Manuals.

For my notes, click my username and send me the pc service tag number via private message.

I found a solution to a similar issue! It was a faulty ribbon cable connection in my case. Hope this helps someone.

The symptoms:

So, I have been dealing with a similar issue where keys work on their own whim. Some keys (especially the bottom row keys in my case) stop working very frequently. Sometimes a vigorous shake or knock fixes it and sometimes not even that. After trying all solutions out there and failing, today I finally decided that this was a hardware problem and took the laptop apart. And I found the problem and solved it in a few minutes.

The cause and my solution:

The issue is from the ribbon cable that connects the keyboard to the motherboard. When you take the laptop apart, you can see the wide ribbon cable that is located close to the center. You will probably also notice that it is flimsily taped to the frame and to the connector. You will need to find a way to keep the ribbon cable securely attached to the connection (your solution just needs to be better than Dell's). The somewhat sketchy solution that worked in my case was inserting a very thin piece of plastic along with the ribbon cable and supergluing everything together. I will leave it up to you to decide whether you want to follow my solution or try your own. But hopefully, you will have a properly functioning keyboard by the end.

Rant to Dell:

And now, my dissatisfaction with Dell regarding this issue. It seems like this issue was known to Dell and instead of a redesign (say using a better and more secure connector), they just taped the whole thing!!! I am so very surprised that this flimsy application of tape has made it to the consumer product in this case.

Since apparently no one at Dell was able to diagnose what took me a few minutes, here's my hypothesis of why this issue arises in the first place. Since the frame is plastic and bends very easily, taping the ribbon cable to the frame and then attaching it to a connection on the motherboard means that every time the laptop frame is flexed, the cable is pushed in and out of the connection. Since the laptop is flexed quite easily and frequently, this leads to a bad connection within that matter of a year or two (depending on usage).

I hope Dell doesn't make silly mistakes like this one too often and that they stop offering silly advice on their forum (like, did you try restarting your laptop...).

Brilliant! Thankyou! Thanksalott..!!

Thanks, did you have to take the laptop apart and remove the keyboard assembly ? Am having the same issue where some of the keys are not working (w-s-x-2-caps lock). 

This actually worked!!

This solution needs to be the first link when someone searches this problem on Google.

The very fact that I'm writing this reply (signed up with Google, verified the account, etc.) is proof of how effective this method is.

Thank you.

Hi  

I am having same keyboard issue Inspiron 13 5000 series. 5-6 keys are not working.

1) I have already cleaned the keyboard with vacuum and by removing problematic keys one by one and cleaning it. It didn't work.

2) I downloaded the latest BIOS update ( Inspiron 5368_7368_5568_7569_7778) , but still didn't solve the issue.

3) Today, I reset the keyboard by removing batteries . After that, it worked for 15-20 mintues and same issue re-occured. 

Please help me solved the issue.

That worked for me. Thanks!