Inspiron 6000 bought in November last year

Hi,

In the last few weeks I have had a dodgy mouse pad that has fixed itself (for now). What was happening is that the pad was not picking up finger motion so the cursor was not moving on the screen or sometiems the cursor would jump around the screen. Now the left shift key does not always use uppercase characters for the following keys.

 

"t" key, "y" key, 5 button (this should display a % symbol) and the 6 button (^).

If I use the right shift key and press "t" I get the "T" as expected. If I put the caps lock on the "T" is fine. When I use the left shift key and the keys mentioned above the capital or symbols only display occassionally.

 

I have tried plugging in an external USB keyboard and all is fine.

It only started doing it recently and I`m starting to think it might be a keyboard problem but when I think back a few weeks I remember the touch pad was playing up before this so it could be the motherboard or even something else. Any ideas????

 

It`s still under warranty and returning it will be a pain. I`ve never had one trouble-free laptop yet - and I AM always careful them them. With the last one the screen darkened one day three months after purchase. The previous compaq had a dodgy motherboard (difference periperials misbaved like cracking down the phone line when using the modem and then crackling through the speakers)!

 

Anyway, whinge aside, can anyone offer any advice on what this might be if it`s something simple.

I seem to remember my PC auto-instaling a few Windows patches the other day and I have noticed this behaviour since but I`m still thinking it might be related to the strange mousepad behaviour I was getting a few weeks ago also.

 

Thanks,