keyboard stopped working

[Dale Farnsworth]

It sounds to me like you had a stuck key.  The bios beeps if you keep
pressing a key after the keyboard input buffer is full.  Keyboard
autorepeat causes continual beeping when a key becomes stuck in the
down position.

I think you have a dirty keyboard, causing one or more keys to stick
from time to time.

-Dale

> I don't know what I did but it no longer beeps and it starts windows
> normally. I said 98? I meant xp (SP3). So you suspect the motherboard, huh?
> That might be the issue. My wife spilled wine into it about 3 months prior.
> I let it dry out  and it  worked after that until the keyboard stopped
> working a few months later. My questions are: if the keyboard isn't working
> why does the escape key work? Hmmmmmm... I can't get it to do the same
> thing it did when it was beeping
> 
> On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 10:34 PM, Jim March <1.jim.march at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > OK, obviously it's a hardware issue.  You've done good getting to that
> > point.
> >
> > Here's the problem: laptop keyboards generally don't have any "brains"
> > on board.  At all.  The entire keyboard controller hardware set is on
> > the motherboard.  So there's a strong chance it's the motherboard, but
> > not a certainty.
> >
> > If it was mine, I'd do the following:
> >
> > 1) Go find instructions on how to pull the keyboard out on that
> > specific model, online.  Google is your friend.  So is a $20 set of
> > micro-sized screwdriver bits at Radio Shack that will let you take
> > apart more or less any type of laptop screw, from Torx to Phillips to
> > regular:
> >
> > http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3932539
> >
> > EVERY geek needs this.  You can take apart all kinds of little
> > gadgets, not just laptops.  External hard drives, MP3 players (like a
> > Sansa I used to use that would hard-lock once in a while, had to pull
> > the battery that was behind micro-screws...).
> >
> > 2) Pop the keyboard off.  Do nothing else.  NOTE: laptop keyboard
> > connectors are oddball inside.  Basically, you'll have a flat "end"
> > that goes into a "slot" and then there'll be a thing that anchors it
> > called the "clip".  Go REAL easy sliding the clip back and forth as
> > you can break one of the ends.  The good news is, you can still make
> > it work even if it looks "broken" - this article with pics explains:
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2009/11/17/fix-broken-keyboard-connector-on-laptop-motherboard/
> >
> > 3) See if that changes the boot behavior.  If it does, you may be in
> > luck - something is shorted out in the keyboard itself.  In that case
> > used laptop keyboards for various models (even older ones) are often
> > available on Ebay for cheap - as little as $10-$15, sometimes up to
> > $25, $40 would be high on an older one (used "pulled working").
> >
> > If everything is the same keyboard in or out, well hell, I would
> > suspect the motherboard and at that point, anything from the Win98 era
> > is just not worth dealing with :(.
> >
> > Jim
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 10:09 PM, Michael Havens <bmike1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > I have a laptop (tohiba satellite m35x-s114) with windows 98 on it whose
> > > keyboard stopped working. I set it aside for about 4 months and then I
> > had
> > > the bright idea that it might be a windows problem so I fired the
> > computer
> > > up with mint12 (live) and it just started beeping at the very first
> > screen
> > > (before bios). So I restated it again pressing the esc key and it loaded
> > > from the cd-rom but the keyboard still doesn't work. So I did it again
> > .....
> > > sometimes it will load the cd but sometimes I get the BIOS screen. (it
> > all
> > > depends on how long I hold the esc key down)
> > > I found that when I put a USB keyboard on it the computer will start.Will
> > > updating the BIOS help it? Or how do I fix the BIOS so it will initialize
> > > the keyboard?
> > >
> > > The BIOS screen says:
> > >
> > > <Bios name and copyright info>
> > > EAL21 BIOS Version V2.00
> > > CPU = Intel (R) Celeron(R) M processor 1.30GHz
> > > 247M System RAM Passed
> > > 1024K Cache SRAM Passed
> > > System BIOS shadowed
> > > Video BIOS shadowed
> > > Fixed Disk 0: <type>
> > > ATAPI CD-ROM: <type>
> > > Mouse initialized
> > >
> > > Then at the bottom of the screen it says to press f2 for setup and to
> > press
> > > f12 for boot device selection menu.
> > > And the incessant beeping stats again after a second or so or it boots
> > the
> > > cd-rom.
> > > Hmmmmmm.... Isn't the BIOS screen supposed to say 'Initializing
> > keyboard'?
> > > it seems the BIOS no longer initializes the keyboard. Does anyone know
> > if I
> > > can fix this? Or did this laptop go to the great bit-bucket in the sky?
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > :-)~MIKE~(-:
> > >
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
> 
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