inspiron 1545 types !@#$% vs 12345 help!

Wife's dell inspiron 1545 has worked great till yesterday, our littlest one might have hit a few keys on the bottom row area, but now when she types certain keys act as if they are on some sort of shift mode.

For example 12345 comes out as !@#$% AND , . come out as <>...

I searched the manual for FN combos or answers but nothing i can find that might relate, no numlock on here that I can just FN/numlock to try and fix it, went into ease of access area in control panel (win 7), confirmed nothing was weird or checked that shouldn't be, I am just stumped as to what causes this or how to fix it.

if anyone has a suggestion please let me know, her user acct requires a number in her password, so she can't even sign into her acct (mine on her machine doesnt have a number) so i can still get in and adjust stuff thankfully hehe..

Thanks for any suggestions,

Bill

 

Try popping off the Shift keys and seeing if there's something jammed there? Else, the keyboard is probably broken. It's cheap to get a new keyboard though...

 

Take an air canister and blow out any debris that might be under the keys. Boot the computer and press F12 when you see the Dell logo and enter in to Dell Diagnostics run the test on the keyboard. If the keyboard test passes. Go to Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore and restore to a previous date.

 

this happened to me before i have the exact same laptop i would take sa spurs1 advice. but also check to make sure a key isnt jammed for example the shift key is a big culprt( happen to me)

 

heres a link for a new keyboard with amazon http://www.amazon.com/Genuine-new-Dell-Inspiron-notebook/dp/B0043CG3QG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317419412&sr=8-1[/URL]

hope this of help (but your keyboard mighten even be broken this is for worse case seniro) and if u need help installing ask myself or u tube it or any user on this site.

 

I would check these two things

-Caps Lock
-Sticky Keys (by pressing shift 5 times in a row)

With both of these enabled, you'll get that symptom...
Normal: (123qwe)
Capslock: (123QWE)
Sticky Shift: (!@#QWE)
Sticky Shift + Capslock: (!@#qwe)

 

She may have accidentally hit the accessibility lock which you will have to go into the Control Panel and fix.