Serious problem with my Inspiron 1420

Ok, so I got my new Dell Inspiron 1420 in the beginning of August and have been loving it ever since. My screen is not grainy and I don't mind the maligned loose batter or even the wiggly CD Drive. However, not two weeks after I received my notebook my keyboard began to do abnormal things. When I would press backspace, the keyboard would instead type "]]]]]]" and when I would press caps lock my media hotkeys would light up and all of the keys would go awry until i pressed caps lock again. Some of my keys would remain in caps lock mode and others would do things not assigned to their function. This problem went away after a restart, but soon started happening more often. So I called a Dell service representative who was nice but didn't seem to know much beyond what she was directed to tell me, which was to start the diagnostic mode and she redownloaded the BIOS for me. The problem went away for a day or two...but then slowly started recurring again. Just thirty minutes ago, my keyboard went completely unresponsive. I was able to enter the diagnostic mode and confirm that somehow about 10 of my keys were linked to each other (when I would press one all of them would press) and so I shut the computer down. Now (thirty minutes later) I am typing on the keyboard and it is just fine. Dell has offered to send me a replacement keyboard (which I have to install but my question is: Is the keyboard the problem? Does anyone have experience with anything like this happening? I don't see how the keyboard could be at fault when at this moment I am typing perfectly on the computer...but then again, I don't know too much about computers. If anyone can please help me out with some advice or words of wisdom about this kind of thing, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Welcome to NBR, dbzman645.

It could be the keyboard, or the motherboard. Since the keyboard is easier to replace, Dell may think its a good way to see what the problem is. My advice would be to replace the keyboard, and just see if it does fix the issue. If it doesn't, then simply contact Dell on a furhter course of action. There have been instances of such problems in the past, but with HP notebooks. This is the first I have seen of this sort of problem on a Dell.

 

Problem could be with the PCMservice.exe service. there have been a lot of issues with the keyboard if this service is enabled. try disabling this and see if the issue gets resolved.

1. Click Start, click Run, type msconfig, and then click OK to open the System Configuration Utility.
2. On the Startup tab, click to clear the PCMServices check box, and then click OK.
3. Click Restart to restart your computer.

 

dbzman645 Has your problem been fixed? I have a 1420 and when it gets hot, the number keys start to generate many keystrokes when pressed... and sometimes light up the media buttons. After I let the computer cool down for a few minutes, the number keys work okay again. It seems to be getting worse so I was thinking about calling Dell...