Hi,

I have some keys that stopped working on my Inspiron 3501 keyboard and want to ask what the next steps are.

The keys do not register in the BIOS keyboard test, so I am assuming this rules out any software problem and it must be either hardware or bug in the BIOS.

My question is: should I now replace the keyboard or is there some chance it is a bios problem, or some other problem?

I have the latest bios updates (v1.33) and I haven't tried downgrading.

I haven't spilled anything on the keyboard or mishandled it or anything like that. External keyboards work fine. On the software side, I use linux, I tried a live, clean, usb image of Kubuntu 24.04, keyboard still doesn't work. The keyboard worked perfectly when I first installed this distribution earlier in the year.

The keys that do not work are left arrow, down arrow, numpad enter, numpad '-', calculator button, maybe others, I haven't tested them all systematically.  I could live with it except for the arrows. They are all on the same side of the keyboard, but they are not all frequently used keys.

I know there are other similar threads on this forum but they don't quite answer my question.

Thanks in advance,

Alex