For anybody who can suggest something to help the problem.

I have an Inspiron 5100 laptop that I've had since September 2003. I haven't had too many problems with it... well that hardware, except a slight overheating problem with the fan. But yesterday my keyboard stopped working properly.

I noticed the first problem started when I was typing and it was captializing the first letter of words when I wasn't pressing "shift" (mind you, I normally only press the left shift, never the right). Then when I started up Microsoft Word, it produced a box saying "The ctrl button is compressed, would you like to start up in safe mode?" I said no and it started up Word normally, but then would not let me type, only do commands with control whatever.

Afterwards, I noticed some of the keys randomly stop working, or not work properly. Such as when I press the "s" key it wouldn't type s... sometimes it would, alot of the time it wouldn't. Then when I would press the "p" key it would type "po".

I ended up opening up my keyboard and unplugging it from the main board, and installing an external keyboard, which is how I'm typing now. I found that when I left the original keyboard plugged into my computer it would "fight" with the external keyboard and continue to "type" letters into such things as my password and in Word.

I already checked my computer for viruses, adware, spyware, and it's clean. So I'm working if this is just a hardware problem and, if so, how would one go about fixing it.

If it does need to be replaced, can anybody suggest a good place to get it done and how much it would cost?

Thank you very much.
~T

Message Edited by TatiK on 09-20-2006 01:59 PM