Alt Keys no longer responding - m17x r3

Like it says in the title, all of a sudden the alt/altgr keys have gone south for the winter.

I noticed the issue a couple of days ago, and after some messing about the issue just seemed to go away.

However tonight it came back and does not seem to be abating.

alt+f4 doesnt close things and I cant even lock the desktop with crtl+alt+del

Have tried a clean boot, system restore (which failed even though the restore point was only 3 days old), sticky keys is switched off the whole shebang.

Of all the keys to fail these seem unlikely as they are seldom used compared to others and its weird that both alt and alt GR decided to pack up at the same time.

Google turns up nowt but stuff I've already tried (most people it ends up being sticky keys) and I dont have a USB keyboard lying around to test with atm.

I'd rather avoid doing a full clean install or another 2 week long debacle with Dell tech support like it was when the GPU died so if anybody has any suggestions please fire away.

Thanks in advance

 

Did you spill any liquid on your keyboard? If you didn't, probably your keyboard is going bad...just buy a replacement one or call up Alienware if you are under warranty.

 

No liquids that I know of, but my son does use the computer, I just find it weird that 2 buttons at either end of the keyboard went at the same time when it was literally working just yesterday.

A bit more experimenting yielded some weird results, opened up a notepad and hit alt repeatedly, every 5-6 strokes it produced a - sign.

Altgr in the same notepad produced a carriage return every couple of strokes, so there is obviously still some kind of connection.

I'm still within my warranty by a few days (I think) so perhaps i'll just give em a call in the morning to see what they suggest.

Anybody else with any advice care to chime in?

 

Ok so a bit more playing around done.

I turned stickey keys on and turned the system tray icon on so i could see when windows thought the button was down.

Repeated strokes did not turn it on, but when I hit altgr first then alt it came on.

System now responds to alt+f4 and ctrl+alt+del since turning stickey keys back off.

No idea how long it stays like that though.

Does seem like whatever the issue is, its software rather than hardware related though.

 

Does it work fine with an external keyboard? if so, you may need to replace the kbrd.

 

I dont have one lying around to test with, going to see if I can get one at work for the purposes of a test.

Issue has re-occured tonight at some point and the previous solution is falling short, not sure what set it off but I had been checking it at regular intervals during the day, and the only piece of software I've run tonight that I did'nt run during the day was Team Speak 3, but I fail to see how that would set it off.