Acer Aspire 5672 Keyboard Problem

Hey guys, I'm having a problem with my 2 years old Acer. The keyboard has started acting up in the past 2 weeks in a very weird manner. For example: when in Windows and using the up/down arrow keys in Firefox to scroll, a random "q" is generated at the same interval of time. This is apparent because of the search feature in Firefox.
While under Linux and in a non-gui console (eg F1), the keyboard generates what looks like ^@, which is equivalent to Ctrl + 2. Also what is more irritating, while this is happening, and I try to use the gui, the keyboard works for a bit after I log in and then it stops responding making the laptop unusable.

Has anyone else had this problem so far? I was wondering if you guys have any tips for me.

 

have you tried updating the BIOS??

i've noticed they update keyboard info in a lot of BIOS updates,,

just a thought

bigO

 

have you try external keyboard maybe the internal one in it is shot

you can problay get replacment keyboard quite cheap direct from acer

 

The BIOS that is currently installed is 3234 and the only newer one is 3236 but it says it's for Vista.... What's that all about ?

Also yes I have tried an external keyboard which works. The laptop still generates the Ctrl + 2 in the virtual consoles on Linux but at least i can use the gui properly. Same story in Windows.

Should I update the BIOS to 3236? I mean how much can the BIOS have to do with this .... this just happened randomly while using the laptop....

 

ALL VISTA BIOS's ARE BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE WITH OLDER OSs

sorry for the caps,, i just see this comment so often it makes me shout

 

Yeah it is annoying and I never ever ask this I swear

 

Heh, sorry for asking, but I've read a bunch of articles that say that Phoenix BIOSes are starting to not support Linux because of the deal that they have with Microsoft. Anyway I'll update the BIOS in a bit, we'll see how it goes.

 

OFFTOPIC Hey man no offense. I was joking with bigO

 

neopran,,, he wasn't flaming you or anything,,, he asked the same question a few days ago,,,, it was an inside joke between he and i,,, and sorry if i came off as snappy,,, i was having a bad day,,,, some STUPID GIRL kept asking me the same question,,, like 6 F#@%!^@ times.. when the first answer i gave her was all she needed to know and it answered all 6 of the following messages she sent me...

as you atthegates,,,, sure you don't, and bears don't crap in the woods either

later

bigO

 

no problem guys...

Anyway I updated the BIOS but that didn't solve it. My Fedora still boots though so that's good.... Ugh I guess I'll have to open the laptop up and see if maybe messing around with the connector helps.

 

that's you next option,,, and be happy that ACER keyboards can be found cheap on EBAY,, just incase you need a new one.... lets pray it's not MB problems

later,
bigO

 

Bigozone the keyboard from acer directly last i got was 10 bucks

I don,nt think ebay will be cheap in this case I order few keyboard and always found online price to be 50 to 90 bucks where as acer 10 buck plus ship

 

Do you guys know where I can find a service manual ? I don't feel like poking around too much since I don't really have much time for it atm.

 

I finally had the time to pop it open today. Pretty easy actually. Anyway I took off the keyboard and blew some air onto it to "clean" it. Plugged it back in and now I don't have any more random characters being generated. Let's hope it lasts!

Thanks for your help everyone

 

Glad you got it work ya the aspire 5670 serios is pretty nice lot of upgrade you can do it too

 

Glad to see you got the keyboard issue taking care of, my almost 2 yr old 5672 is still trouble free (knocking on wood!) If you still want the service manual, PM with an email address and I can send it to ya