Studio XPS 1645 Keyboard Bounce

Has anyone had an issue with a bounce problem with the keyboard on their Studio XPS 1645 laptop?  Please reply to the poll below. [Please visit the original post to access the poll]

Sorry, never had that issue.

Yes.

A lot of other people seem to have the same issue here: http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19280281.aspx?PageIndex=1

I had it when I first got the laptop. Due to an unrelated keyboard problem, the keyboard had to be replaced  & I noticed that this problem remained. Then, due to a recurrence of the unrelated problem, the keyboard & motherboard were both replaced, but this  problem still occurs.

Someone has posted  a sort of solution to it here: http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19328066/19680164.aspx#19680164 I haven't had a chance to test it myself yet though.

I voted "Once in each Paragraph".  But I have a Dell Inspiron 1470.

You should start another poll including all new Dell laptops.  You'll likely get even more hits.

Also, I have created a utility that can work as a solution.  Please look here.  It works for me, and it might work for many others as well, at least while we wait for Dell to come up with a more permanent  hardware-level and/or driver-level solution.

Forever thought it was my typing, just not use to the new computer & keyboard.  But no, it is the keyboard; many times it will not respond to a key input and then sometimes it bounces and gives double strikes.  This machine has other issues.  1645 i7 720 6mb RGBLED.  Constant lockups.  Hard freezes requiring power down.  Dell is replacing as they are all i7 RGBLED due to power supply insufficiencies.  New one with either go down in display or down in processor.   Such a shame!  I really like this screen but in the long term the processor is the life of the laptop.

I have not experienced any "keyboard bounce" issues with my Studio XPS 1645 notebook PC.

Other than the thermal case vent design, which is partially obstructed when the LCD display is raised, IMO Dell's Studio XPS laptop is the best of class hardware product for any personal laptop or home PC I have owned.

I purchased my laptop last month w/i7 core, 4 GB RAM, BD optical drive and SSD. The SSD obviates any need to support RAID 0 for performance increase, enables the notebook to operate more quietly and the lighter weight adds to its portability.  

I've noticed three of issues with the AutoHotKey script recently.

One issue that seems to occur every now & then is that when typing fairly fast, it sometimes seems to pause itself completely for a couple of seconds - then what I was typing while is was paused comes out, but in completely the wrong order - so just looks like gibberish. When this has started happening, it seems to keep recurring every few minutes until the computer is restarted. I've no idea what causes it though. Its happened to me 3 or 4 times.

The next issue is that Caps Lock doesn't seem to have any effect - I can press the button & it lights up etc & login boxes will even warn that it is turned on - but the letters will all continue to come out in lower case.

The final issue seems similar to the second one - I have foreign keyboard layouts set up. I can use the hotkey to change to them, or the icon on the taskbar, but everything still comes out as though it is typed on the normal keyboard.

Having said this, I can avoid any of these temporarily by disabling AutoHotKeys - but I rapidly remember how annoying the duplicate characters were.

Hello MAT,

@ keys garbled when typing fast: Not sure what causes this; I have not encountered it (but granted, I am not an extremely fast typer). There may be a setting inside AHK that affects this... it is for the key delay (called SetKeyDelay), but I am not sure if it will help or not.  Something that may help though: When it happens, did you try just closing the AHK script (right-click the toolbar icon), ten restarting the script?  If that works, then at least you wouldn't have to restart your whole machine.

@ Caps Lock:  You mean, you actually WANT your cAPSLOCK key to work?  :emotion-5:  You may want to check the script that you downloaded... look on line 24.  Does it say   Capslock::LShift   with a semicolon (";") as the first character?  If not, then put the semicolon in and try running the script again (not the .exe).  Or, you may try downloading the script, since I just schecked it and it does have the semicolon.  There's a chance that the compiled .exe has the cAPSLOCK key disabled.

@ Foreign Keys:  I don't use that feature on my laptop, so of course, I did not test it.  I apologize, I don't have the time to devote to this, but perhaps you or another kind soul could take this script and perhaps modify it in a way that does not alter the extended keymap (while hopefully still accomplishing the filtering).

Of course, as I mentioned in the script thread, the best solution would be to fix the problem it at a lower level, like in the debounce portion of the keyboard driver.

I have a brand new DDell SStudio XPS i7 Windows 7 machine from work, and it's borderline unusuable for any serious touch typing due to thiss double keysstroke problem, as demonstrated in this single sentence touch typing normally.

I suspect it has something to do with thiss sleek looking Mac-style keyboard they added to the machine.

Dell, you really need to provide a keyboard driver fix for this problem.  Diid anyone test this setup?

Please note that normally I have to ggo back and fix up sentences after typing them.

Hey KingdomSeeker288,

I came across your posting just now.  I have a DELL Studio 1340 XPS and since new it has had the keybounce problem.  I've lived with it for a year - but thought I'd try to sort it out after using a friend's laptop all weekend.  It's only after using a non bouncing keyboard that I realised just how bad the problem was on my Dell.

I installed your fix and:

This is my normal typing with your filter on.

Typing away as fast as I can and looking for keyboard bounces. Now let’s suspend the filter.

Typing  now with the sscript paused and immediately we can seee that I’m getting the usual collection of ddouble letters. Continue typing and it’s not long before the double letters aappear and often when touch typing I’m not looking at the screen and whenn I do eventallly look aat it aall those double letters do get a bit annoying.

So now the filter is on again  and the added bonus is that the caps lock key is disabled. I never /hardly ever use it although sometimes I hit it when typing an ‘a’ and find a couple of lines later that I have a pile of upper case that I don’t want.  Hey!  Look at that… no errors!

You are right of course, Dell ought to issue a driver fix.  But until then, I'll use your utility.

I'm so pleased with it, I'm happy to pay you for it! Not enough to make your fortune  and I don't know how to go about it... paypal I guess.  When I think of all those 59p apps I buy for my iPhone, your utility is worth a lot more to me in the time I 'll save correcting my work.  I'm not techie enough to know how to edit the semi colon thing to make the caps lock key work  - but I'm OK with it off.

Yup, TractorBouy, it looks like your machine suffers from the same old "keyboard stutter" problem too. So you've had it for a year? That's about how long I've had mine. I wonder if newer Dell laptops don't show the problem as much?

I bought my daughter a Dell for Christmas.  Studio 1558 with illuminated keyboard.  No keyboard problems there.  But as far as studio - this thread suggests it is across all models. There must be a lot of very tolerant and easily pleased users.  My Studio 1340 has the illuminated keyboard.  Does the problem just affect these, or are all keyboards affected?

Hi KingdomSeeker - Tractorbuoy again.

I've been investigating the key bounce thing further, and found another thread you've been active on.  You'll know the one I mean:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19328066.aspx?PageIndex=2

I've tried the reg fix described there.  What do you think?  It does seem neat insofar as there's no start-up, and while not the driver solution we all seek, it seems to be the net best thing.

Hi KingdomSeeker - Tractorbuoy again. I've been investigating the key bounce thing further, and found another thread you've been active on.  You'll know the one I mean: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19328066.aspx?PageIndex=2 I've tried the reg fix described there.  What do you think?  It does seem neat insofar as there's no start-up, and while not the driver solution we all seek, it seems to be the net best thing.

Yes, I expect that they both will offer similar performance.  The regedit method carries the typical risks associated with registry edits, but if you're comfortable with that, then it's really no disadvantage.  The regedit method, being a built-in Windows solution, will probably carry fewer side-effects with built-in Windows key mappings, so it may work with things like F-keys and extended-language keysets. (For those reasons, if I get some time, I may try it myself on a whim.)