i1400 2611-472 Keyboard issues

[smarkham]

Long story, please bear wth me...I had a failing hardrive, and decided to max the ram, replace the HD and install XP Home. All was OK for about 2 months, but I started to have keyboard issues. This machine got (gets) a fair amount of regular use, and I figured the problems were reasonably due to wear and tear. This laptop stays on 24/7, and I fail miserably at remembering to close the cover slightly to keep the cat off the keyboard.

On several occasions since the upgrade, the keyboard was completely unresponsive. A reboot could fix the problem. I was getting odd keyboard output, most noteably in Excel. Arrow down several cells and the numeral "2" would show up, arrow up several cells and the numeral "8" would show up. I would be typing along entering data in a spread sheet and look up and realize I was 50 rows down and 40 columns across, like I had hit the page down/up keys. It would randomly go in to scroll lock mode (I think?). I have always kept an outboard numeric keypad into the ps/2 port on the back. I would stumble around with different key combinations shift/scrlk ctrl/numlk, whatever to get it back to normal. I would eventually reboot, it would work for a little while, then start again with the keyboard issues above. I could not consistently recreate the problems.

I figured I had left something not plugged in completely/correctly when I changed the HD. I re-seated the ribbon cables. The problems continued and coincidentally (I believe) the trackpoint device went bonkers. It was not calibrating, it was screaming all over the place, it seemed as if the contacts were flipped: up was down, down was up. Re-installed the trackpoint driver (Lenovo website specifically excludes XP as a supported OS for this model-but hell, it worked fine for 2 months) Shot it with compressed air, it improved slightly, but PC Doctor Diagnostics confirmed at the dos level that the track point was screwed.

I stumbled upon a 2611-451 (same keyboard) on craigslist. Suprisingly, the guy worked for IBM, had thinkpads all over his house. His thinkpad had seldom been used, (and no cat hair in his keyboard!) but has a broken connector for the charger port on the system board. Put his keyboard in mine. I accidentially sheared the trackpoint ribbon cable on the old keyboard while taking it out. Didn't matter anyway, and it didn't appear like I did any damage to the connector itself. All seemed to be fixed...I thought.

Started to work tonight on another Excel spread sheet. The numbers randomly popping into a cell with the arrow keys has started as well as the scroll lock oddities. Only the numeral 2 would pop into a cell with the down arrow key. I couldn't recreate the numeral 8 with the up arrow.

Any ideas? Thank you for reading this, and for any suggestions.

[schen]

I'm not sure that I have any genius solutions other than to try the KB on a different machine, since I suspect that it's your MB and not the KB. Especially if you've already done a clean install. I've got an old i1400 as well 2621-420 that shares the exact same problems you've seen (sheared ribbon cable for trackpoint, and bad A/C connector), so it's been reduced to a parts machine as well.

Stan