Question Pressing the number "1" key on my keyboard opens a variety of windows instead of typing the number

[Suburban_Ed]

I was typing normally when I somewhat sloppily tried to type today's date. When I hit 1 a bunch of windows popped up (see picture).

It's opening up Edge (I don't use Edge) to a "get help" page consistently. If I press 1 while in another browser, sometimes it will open up those two other windows, but instead of opening Edge it will open a Help page in that browser.

I have no idea how the key could have gotten coded to these other actions, but I need to figure out how to fix it. The 1 on my number pad still types 1. If I pull up the virtual keyboard on-screen it also still types 1. Someone mentioned that pressing ALT + Win resolves something for them, but it doesn't for me. I've also reset my machine and the issue is still there.

Sometimes if I press the 1 key, or press it more than once, I'll get some digits to show up on screen. I just did it here and "z73" typed in. The 73 part at least seems consistent.

I don't know what I could have done to cause this, but I'm lost on how to fix it. I also tried PowerToys Keyboard manager to remap the key... it didn't work either. Any suggestions?

 

[Lutfij]

Are you working with a laptop or a keyboard? If the latter, please mention the make and model of your peripheral. If the former, please mention the make, model and SKU to your laptop.

One thing you could do is use KeyboardTester and see if the 1 key is triggering other keys.

 

[Suburban_Ed]

It is a separate keyboard. It is a Decogear Mechanical Cherry Red MX Keyboard DGKMECHY1K.

I tried KeyboardTester. When I first hit 1 it pops up those three windows and nothing shows as entered. If I keep pressing 1 I'm now getting different things each time, but have gotten "1qaz73" a couple times, just variations of 73 and 1 other times.

 

[Suburban_Ed]

Oddly, the issue went away on its own. I suspect that it was caused by a setting in Synergy conflicting with a tool called Presentify for Mac. Presentify is an annotation tool for Mac that uses hotkeys to trigger annotation. Synergy is a cross-platform keyboard/mouse sharing tool that I've been using across my Windows 11 PC to work from my Macbook as well. It could have just been Synergy, because they had a new release today that I installed, but I just recently added Presentify so I'm throwing them in as well as a possible culprit.

Anyway, thank you for reading, I thought I'd give all the details that I have for anyone who happens to find this thread via search. Gooood luck if you have this issue, that was frustrating!

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