Press one key, but get multiple characters.

I also, have this problem. It states Sat. April 8. I contacted dell but my warranty expired..i just purchaseds this pc in october. They keys are: 23wedscx

Well, last night I unplugged the keyboard from the computer. Then I plugged it back in. Things seem to be working properly now. Try unplugging your keyboard, it's very easy.

Do you havew laptop? How do you unplug the keyboard from the laptop?

Yeah, mine is the Inspiron 1200 laptop.

It took me awhile to figure out, but ended up not requiring any tools to open. There are 2 hinges where the monitor attaches to the computer. Go to the back side of these hinges and you can pop them up. Once popped up, the little panel where the power button sits will come loose. Once that is loose, your keyboard will just pop out. There is a wire-ribbon attaching the keyboard to the computer. Where the ribbon attaches to the computer there is a little plastic connection. All you need to do is pop loose the black plastic hinge on that connection and the keyboard is free.

I'm not sure why the keyboard would work for everything but your login screen. That is beyond my knowledge of computers. Sorry...

First of all, THANK YOU richiew13. I was having this same problem and your post helped me partially fix it. Before my laptop was almost unusable from the moment I pressed a key. Thanks to you now at least I have a workaround to allow me to use my laptop, although it isn't fully fixed. Let me describe my problem in detail:

Initially I would get the login screen and when I would input my password it would apparently be typing something different. I just didn't know back then because it doesn't show you what you type in the password field, so I couldn't know that the characters I was typing were being misinterpreted. That and every time I pressed enter my laptop would become frozen for a while (around 10 seconds).

I tried connecting an external keyboard and that allowed me to enter the password correctly and log into windows. That's when I was able to open a text editor and see that when I used the laptop keyboard all the characters would come out wrong (but not when I used the external keyboard). Plus, when I pressed enter I would get something like "XCV\" instead of a carriage return.

Then I found this thread and tried your solution, which worked for using the keyboard AFTER I'm logged into windows. However, the laptop keyboard STILL doesn't work in the login screen and I always have to type my password using the external keyboard.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Message Edited by Pixxel on 04-14-200601:45 PM

I figured out what the problem is. For some reason Num Lock now sets on by default at startup and, since my password has some characters on the numerical pad I would be entering the wrong password (that is "*" instead of "p", for instance). This is very strange, since even if I go to the BIOS and set it to not have Num Lock on by default on startup it will still do it.

Hopefully this information will be of help to someone.

Thanks again for your help in telling me about disconnecting the keyboard. Without that I would not have been able to get very far towards solving my problem.

Mine has been working fine ever since. You should probably just buy a new keyboard if you haven't tried that yet. I believe a new keyboard costs about $15 from Dell.

I have exact same problem with same keys.
Have replaced keyborad...took out and reinstalled...it worked for a short time...but problem returns.
what is your status?

Have you recently made any changes to your registry?

My problem turned out to have been originated by doing some changes to my registry, and they went away after I restored an older version of it.

I bought new keboard.....still have problem

Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, I have already shared the extent of my knowledge on how to solve this issue...

i will try restore...but the problem is intermittant..seems more like hardware.

Thanks

Thanks much. I hope it works for me.

I thought it was a hardware problem as well since it initially got fixed just by unplugging and replugging the keyboard. It worked for a while and then suddendly it stopped working again, so I unplugged and replugged again. I kept doing that for a few times and then I tried restoring the registry.

After that it worked and stayed fixed. Hopefully that will work for you as well. Let us know.

Good luck!