[SOLVED] Weird 1st Character & Capitalization Problem in Web Browsers

[gremlinkurst]

I've asked this question on a different forum, but nobody has any idea what I'm talking about. Here's what happens, and it doesn't happen in Windows Explorer or in Locate32 (which I use for searches because Windows Explorer sucks so horribly, its index being absolutely useless): Every time I try to initiate a search or manually enter an address in a browser's search/address bar, the first character refuses to register, giving me the expected error when it tries to direct me to oogle.com, icrosoft.com, or directing me to https://www.mail.com/consentpage when I want Gmail. I have to SAVAGELY punch in the first character, or tap it repeatedly as I [predictably] curse.

That's not the only issue; many times, despite entering UPPERCASE characters, lowercase characters appear. If I meant to enter lowercase characters, damnit, I would have entered them as such! Sometimes the browser ignored my uppercase specification on only the first character, but often it refuses to allow any uppercase character at all.

My machine is not infected. Webroot has been safeguarding my computers for twelve years, and has allowed only ONE malignant intruder in that time, eliminating it completely after the next cloud-maintained definitions update. I feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in Kindergarten Cop when he repeatedly yells at that kid, "It's not a tumor, I tell you!" It's not a virus.

Something has, though, just now occurred to me: I have a Razer Cynosa Chroma keyboard that just might be the culprit! This problem has existed for maybe a couple of months. Now, I could plug in my backup Microsoft-issue keyboard right now, but that wouldn't be very scientific, wouldn't help properly isolate the problem, not unless I shut the desktop all the way down, unplugged the Razer device, plugged in the Microsoft HID, and then restarted...and I don't want to to that right at this moment; I'll do that when I shut down for the night, which might not be for another six hours. I'll post this in case anyone has a bright idea, or has heard of this problem before, and I'll edit this or add a comment when I reboot in the AM.

Thanks!

 

[Colif]

problem could be Synapse (Razer program) so have you tried a clean boot - all it does is stops programs, it doesn't remove them

Try a clean boot and see if it changes anything - make sure to read instructions and make sure NOT to disable any microsoft services or windows won't load right - https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

if clean boot fixes it, it shows its likely a startup program. You should, over a number of startups. restart the programs you stopped to isolate the one that is to blame.

 

[gremlinkurst]

problem could be Synapse (Razer program) so have you tried a clean boot - all it does is stops programs, it doesn't remove them

Try a clean boot and see if it changes anything - make sure to read instructions and make sure NOT to disable any microsoft services or windows won't load right - https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

if clean boot fixes it, it shows its likely a startup program. You should, over a number of startups. restart the programs you stopped to isolate the one that is to blame.

Such elaborate measures have proven totally unnecessary; I have determined the cause of the problems by implementing the measure I spoke of earlier, rebooting with a different keyboard. The Razer Cynosa Chroma keyboard is indeed the ***damned culprit. I tested the $12 keyboard on all four installed browsers, Chrome (annoying as crap), Edge (truly damned annoying), Firefox (most useful and flexible, but its developers seem bent on ruining it), and Internet Explorer (actually still has some limited utility), and I experienced not a SINGLE aforementioned problem. I have HAD IT with Razer's stupid keyboards! Wait til you hear how they screwed this one up at the factory!

By the time I noticed this problem, it was already out of warranty. You see, I learned how to type on a 1934 Smith-Corona back in 1972. To you guys born in the the twenty-first century, typewriters were archaic mechanical devices that people used to produce most office documents and personal correspondences before the internet was born; they didn't have wires or circuits or transistors or IC chips. I was exposed to my first electronic typewriter in 1979. Anyway, I touch-type (enter on a keyboard) between a hundred thirty to a hundred eighty words a minute. "Touch-type" means without looking at the keyboard, which explains why it was a little while before I noticed the HUGE design flaw of this model keyboard, something which most computer users would have noticed right away, since they have to look at the keyboard to enter the desired characters. You know how you have to depress the SHIFT key in order to enter uppercase and many special characters like question marks and exclamation points, and how when you look at the keys the ones requiring the SHIFT key to enter are on top of the keys, and the regular ones are right below it on the same key? Look at your keyboard, and you will see what I mean...provided it's not also a Razer Cynosa Chroma, that is. Well, on MY keyboard, that crap is BACK-ASSWARDS! My top row of alphanumeric keys, the one right above the QWERTY row, has all the numbers ON TOP, and all the special characters on the bottom. Every single damned key that requires the use of the SHIFT key to enter different characters is backwards. I never bothered to turn it back in and get a refund for the simple reason that I don't LOOK at the keyboard when I'm entering characters...which kinda explains my error rate per accuracy; it's a tad high, but I could give a damn because I got in the habit of proofreading my crap a long time ago. Plus there's spellchecker and grammar checker, but I have to teach spellchecker because it's so stupid (has a tiny vocabulary) and mostly ignore grammar checker (because it's even stupider). I mean, just how smart does spellchecker have to be to figure out that when I entered a complex word with ONE wrong character for it to suggest a word that remotely LOOKS like the one I meant?

Anyhow, problem solved. Razer makes really great mice, but their keyboards suck donkey-nertz. Solution: Buy a different keyboard, one whose engineer isn't dyslexic...or whatever the Hell was responsible for that futz-up. I mean, what the Hell was going on at that factory? Was the entire Quality Assurance team home with mononucleosis that day? Or did that team consist of illegal child labor imported from Masirah, where the kids can't even read Arabic, let alone English?! Or...maybe they were American high school graduates! (I'm allowed to say that; I'm American) Really, it's amazing that thousands of keyboards configured this way actually passed inspection and were sold! It's kinda like this one time when I was in the Navy, and I just watched this guy walk right into this huge hole in the deck—I couldn't believe he didn't see the hole! For just the tiniest fraction of a second, Kenny McCarthy was suspended in mid-air, and his eyes got HUGE—and then he was gone. Fell eighteen feet down to the flight deck, miraculously not breaking any bones. Seeing Kenny (shades of Southpark! Omigod! Kenny's dead...again!) do that was kinda like looking at my keyboard right now is. It's...astonishing. So, if they screwed up something that easy, no wonder the keyboard has other issues.

 

[Colif]

To you guys born in the the twenty-first century, typewriters were archaic mechanical devices that people used to produce most office documents and personal correspondences before the internet was born

We not all young here. I learned to type in College on a Typewriter in 1982, after seeing my first computer same year and thinking, I will need to know how to use these things going forward. Or should I say I tried to learn to type then, never been confident enough to get right keys without looking. Sometimes it is fine but my aim sucks

so is the reverse thing just in the software of the keyboard or are the keys physically printed that way?
I had a Razer kb about 6 years ago until its W key stopped working. You don't know how much you need the key until it stops.
I don't like Razer, having used a Logitech and now a Corsair K70 keyboard since. Their software is very pushy.

 

[gremlinkurst]

We not all young here. I learned to type in College on a Typewriter in 1982, after seeing my first computer same year and thinking, I will need to know how to use these things going forward. Or should I say I tried to learn to type then, never been confident enough to get right keys without looking. Sometimes it is fine but my aim sucks

so is the reverse thing just in the software of the keyboard or are the keys physically printed that way?
I had a Razer kb about 6 years ago until its W key stopped working. You don't know how much you need the key until it stops.
I don't like Razer, having used a Logitech and now a Corsair K70 keyboard since. Their software is very pushy.

Hunh. I thought I'd been pretty clear: When you look at the keys—for instance—the row right above the QWERTY row, the one that's supposed to have the numbers on the bottom and the special characters on top, again, when you LOOK at them, not touching or otherwise manipulating or using them, the special characters on the top of each key...aren't special characters, they are numbers. When you desire to produce the result "$4", to get the dollar sign to appear, LOOKING at the keys, you get confused because the dollar sign, requiring the use of the SHIFT key, appears on the BOTTOM of the key, right below the numeral 4, and every single other key is like that. There isn't any "software" involved in this process but the software inside one's noggin—MY noggin—and since the "software" inside my head—not my eyes—tells me that even though the dollar sign is on the BOTTOM of the 4 key, I must depress the SHOFT key and hold it while I then strike the 4 key.

But, I don't get confused because I do not depend upon what positions the characters occupy on the keys to tell me when and when not to use the SHIFT key. What I'm attempting to communicate is that IF I didn't know how to type, this keyboard would reduce me to a screaming, jibbering madman...that, or, being a person NOT knowing how to type, and this was my first keyboard, I would become VERY, very confused upon confronting a keyboard whose keys were printed properly.

I didn't mention that as a problem, only as something that should have been a wildly-waving red flag as far as its engineering goes. If they can't get the characters printed or imprinted upon the damned keys in the correct positions, then should I be surprised when the much more complicated DRIVERS don't function normally? I expect that when I hit a key that the keyboard shall cause it to appear, that when I enter—or TRY to enter—google.com, I don't end up with my computer telling me that it can't find oogle.com, or icrosoft.com, or dobe.com, or layboy.com, iratebay.com. I mean, iratebay, what is that? A place for irritated people? What? The keyboard thinks I'm only KIDDING when I tell it I want to go to gmail.com, that I REALLY mean mail.com? No. That's absurd, just like the keyboard "thinks" I'm kidding when I want to use capital (uppercase) letters. The keyboard doesn't think. It's only doing what it has been PROGRAMMED to do by the idiots writing the DRIVERS. They are NOT EBKC errors; they are CODER errors. The keyboard behaves this way because some undereducated, incompetent, lazy coder didn't know how to do his job properly, so I have to buy a keyboard that doesn't NEED idiot-written drivers.

I used one such cheap and uncomplicated keyboard to authoritatively determine beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Razer Cynosa Chroma drivers are indeed responsible. Mind you, the silly-arsed backwards-printed keys are only items of amusement, not problems, so when the cheap keyboard failed to produce, through rigorous and time-consuming testing, one single error that the more expensive and flashy-looking keyboard produces consistently, the issue was effectively identified. The new keyboard, which is water-resistant, and has easily-removed keycaps to facilitate cleaning of foreign particulates, and is prettier than the cheap backup I keep for such purposes, arrives later today.

I already refuse to buy Logitech products because they present similar problems, particularly their wireless products. Now I'm adding Razer keyboards to my personal No-Fly list. I haven't noticed any issues with their mice, so I'll continue to buy and use those, but their keyboards are off limits to me from now on.