In the past few months, my laptop has started randomly not accepting any keypresses on the numbers row every few days or so. Everything would work as usual and then, all of a sudden, I won't be able to use these keys.
For instance, I'd try to press 2, 4 or even ( and $ and nothing will register, as if I pressed nothing. I have two keyboards (laptop's and external) and when this happens, neither of the numbers rows on neither of the keyboards will work at all. The Numpad works as usual.
I cannot seem to replicate this; it happens randomly and I haven't found a pattern so far. The only way I've found to fix it is to reboot the laptop. I've checked stickykeys et al, but those don't seem to be on when this happens. I've also tried disconnecting the external keyboard and my external monitor, but that makes no difference.
Any ideas on what could be causing this and/or how to fix it without rebooting?
81 Answer
I would still search your installed programs for any sort of keyboard utilities installed by the laptop vendor or installed by you later. The fact that it happens to exactly 100% of the top row on both keyboards means it is probably a piece of software capturing these key codes and trying to do something clever like "media keys" or something like that. I have a hard time imagining any sort of corruption or install problem that would affect exactly that set of keys regardless of which device sends them.
It fully explains why the numpad works like I said above, those keys send an extended scan code that is different from the normal number keys.
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