odd keyboard problem

[sleepyhead]

Purchased a x61 from a reputable ebay seller and physically it looks great.

However, for some reason the "c", "d", "e" and "3" keys seem to work intermittently. I purchased another keyboard and it seems to do the same thing. I'm attempting to reinstall the driver's now, but outside of that does anyone else have any ideas that could be causing this behavior?

Thanks in advance

[RealBlackStuff]

Get a can of compressed air and blow out the KB- and the motherboard connectors.
You may have dirt in there.

[ArtShapiro]

I have another manufacturer's machine in which the X, S, W and 2 don't work (at least yours is intermittent). A replacement keyboard failed to remediate the issue and the keyboard connector was cleaned. In both our cases, the faulty keys lie on a diagonal. I can only hypothesize a motherboard issue, and that there's some sort of matrix or grid involved at the electrical level to sense / fail to sense the depressed key.

Art

[crac]

Purchased a x61 from a reputable ebay seller and physically it looks great.

However, for some reason the "c", "d", "e" and "3" keys seem to work intermittently. I purchased another keyboard and it seems to do the same thing. I'm attempting to reinstall the driver's now, but outside of that does anyone else have any ideas that could be causing this behavior?

How did it end up with your laptop?

Actually I have exactly the same issue, X61, same row of dead keys. Not a OS problem since "3" is not available in BIOS too.
BUT the keys are ok for some minutes after cold start/wake up... when temperature increase they will stop.
I cleaned the connector, changed the keyboard, without success.
Any other things to try before I change the mainboard?

[wwcanoer]

Me too in 2022 on a T530.
D, E & 3 are intermittent.
Keyboard replacement fixes the issue. (but on that keyboard the top left mouse button doesn't work! I haven't tackled that yet.)
I tried cleaning the connector. Went from the three keys not working to intermittent but most likely they were intermittent all the time. The keys worked this morning and then suddenly stopped working.

Funny story: Five years ago, my cat peed on my T430s keyboard and it stopped working, so I replaced it. But I held onto it in case I ever needed to steal any parts from it. I didn't package it nicely, was just loose in a box. Today, I tried it and 2 rows of keys didn't work. I could see some discoloration on the connector, so I cleaned that with contact cleaner and a q-tip and now it works!

I took the keyboard from an unused T430s to replace the intermittent one in my T530, placed that cat pee board in the T430s, but now the T530 mouse button is bad, so may need to rotate again.