Small but annoying keyboard problem on my T43

[blade12]

Hi,

I am getting some bizzare behaviour from my right alt button, and was hoping for some advice as to how to track the problem down.

Well, first of all, pressing it by itself does absolutely nothing, for example, I am unable to access the upper toolbars with it. Also, most combination keystrokes involving that button dont work, like alt-tabbing, and alt-enter for fullscreen.

However (heres where it gets confusing), pressing ctrl-alt-del will bring up the Windows task manager. IBM support recommeded changing the keyboard, which I have already done, with no improvement.

Running PC-doctor diagnostic shows that pressing the right alt button causes a combination keystroke of left cntrl-and right alt. However, just pressing right alt and del (which should have been the equvalent of ctrl-alt-del) does nothing.

This is a T43 that I recently got off Ebay, so I dont know if the keys have been remaped. However, it appears that it had been R&R'd just prior to sale.

I would appreciate any insights into how I can get to the bottom of this, as, even though its far from essential, I quite like using my right-alt key.

Thanks

[GomJabbar]

Do you by any chance have the Keyboard Customizer Utility installed? Look in Start > All Programs > ThinkVantage > Keyboard Customizer Utility. It is also possible that it could be in Start > All Programs > Access IBM > Keyboard Customizer Utility.

With the Keyboard Customizer Utility you can remap some of the keys, the Right Alt key being one of them.

Keyboard Customizer Utility for Windows 2000/XP - ThinkPad General

I suppose it's possible that some other key remapping utility might be installed.

[blade12]

Oh, thats right, forgot to mention that I had tried the Thinkpad Keyboard Customiser before.

I had mapped it to the Windows key, and it seemed to do the job. This lead me to think that it wasn't a hardware problem.

But I just want it to act like a normal Alt key ... and I cant seem to do that with IBM's program.

I have also tried Keytweak to remap the right alt key to the right alt key, but sadly, it didnt work. I have since unmapped and uninstalled the program to avoid confusing the issue.

[GomJabbar]

It might be that something was written to the registry somewhere along the way that is causing your problem. Maybe a search in the registry might turn something up. Launch regedt32 from the Run menu, and try searching for alt or right alt.

EDIT: Caveat: Be careful making actual changes to the Registry. A wrong change may be hard to fix. You could even stop your machine from booting up.

[blade12]

Getting no joy from IBM support, so had another go at the problem.

Didnt really want to do a workaround, but couldnt pinpoint the root of the problem. Searching the registry for the relevant keyboard scancodes yielded nothing. In the end I just ran the Keytweak program again and remapped the right alt to left alt.

Problem solved.

[blade12]

One last report.

Noticed a few other buttons behaving 'abnormally' such as the tilde, quote, and ^ button. The aforementioned symbols were not appearing until I hit another key. Suddenly realized where the problem may be originating from.

Checked the input language from the Regional and Language option in Control pannel and my suspicions were confirmed. There were 2 keyboard input languages installed. US and US international.

Deleted the US international and things are completely back to normal.

Problem really solved now.