Question Toshiba Pro R50-C Keyboard Konundrum

[RPMtl]

I'm trying to help a fellow with a Toshiba Satellite Pro R50-C runnsing Windowsz 10 where the keyboard is not typing the correct characters (or emits error beeps) and the Enter key does nothing. I was successful in checking it out using a pre-composed text document with all the commands I needed ans so far :

• Ran Win10's "Troubleshoot the keyboard"
• Connected an external USB keyboard and it doesn't work either.
• Checked for viruses w/ Microbytes
• Backed it up using Paragon (free) Community Edition
• Copied all the user files (there weren't many) onto external storage.

I was preparing to try a Windows 10 repair install but I first wanted to confirm that Paragon's recovery USB stick worked in case I needed to restore the backup..

I saw that the Paragon recovery software provides a command prompt option, so I decided to check if the keyboard was working outside of Windows 10.

The keyboard (both internal and a connected external USB one) is still typing the wrong characters and the enter key on both is not working.

QUESTION:

Can a defective laptop keyboard cause all connected keyboards to misbehave?

Otherwise I'm beginning to suspect a damaged/defective motherboard.

I'm pretty good at fixing computers, but this is one of the stranger problems I've seen ...

Russell

 

[Feren142]

Not certain what's going on but I have seen what i suspected to be a corrupted registry (hkey_current_user) impact one keyboard while another worked (different manufacturer). Not sure if it was a driver issue or what but deleting and re-creating the user profile fixed the issue for me. I guess rather than deleting anything you could try making a new profile and seeing if the hardware behaves as expected or better yet see how it behaves while booted from an external disk with user input support like recovery mode or even safe mode.

 

[RPMtl]

I'm back ...

Note that it was MalwareBytes that I scanned with ... not Microbytes

The create new user idea was good and I tried it, but it did not work.

I've had some success ...

I noted that the external USB keyboard would work as long as I did not use certain keys on the laptop keyboard (like z and x). So I deleted the laptop keyboard driver and used a Group Policy to prevent it from being reinstalled when Windows reloaded. It's now working fine with an external keyboard and mouse while the laptop KB and touchpad are effectively disabled )

Might there be a mechanical fault in the laptop keyboard that's causing erroneous signals being sent to the MB which is causing the keyboard IO to crash/lock up? Or do you think it's more likely a motherboard issue. Changing the keyboard is not that hard to do. But the laptop's too old to justify the cost of changing the motherboard.

At least I've found a cause of the problem and have a temporary workaround.

R

 

[RPMtl]

I replaced the keyboard and everything's working as it should

R