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WHY IS MY LAPTOP’S
KEYBOARD NOT WORKING?
Seen any guilty-looking toddlers lurking
suspiciously close to your
laptop with once-full glasses of juice? Accidental spills are one of
many reasons why your laptop’s keyboard can turn into little more
than a jumbled alphabet, but the fault isn’t always as obvious as a
MacBook drowning in Ribena.
The first thing to determine is whether a keyboard fault has knocked
out the entire keyboard or only certain keys. If it’s a cluster of keys
alone, it’s very likely something has been spilled on the keyboard.
Turn the laptop off and remove the battery (if possible),
lay the
keyboard upside down on a cloth or kitchen paper, and let the system
dry thoroughly for 48 hours. Use a dry brush around the affected area
to remove any debris. With any luck, the keyboard will return to full
health when dry. If it doesn’t, a trip to the repair shop beckons.
If the entire keyboard is kaput, it’s likely something else is afoot.
Keyboards are normally connected to the computer’s motherboard
by a thin ribbon-like interface, and it’s not unheard of for these to pop
off – especially if the laptop has been dropped or banged.
Not so long ago, you could normally remove a few screws on the base
of the laptop, wear a static strip, and put the ribbon back in place yourself.
These days laptops are generally sealed units that require special tools
to prise apart. A trip to the repair shop is likely to be necessary.
Before you load the laptop in the car and drive to your local geek
emporium, there is something else you should try to rectify a whole
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keyboard failure on Windows laptops. Turn the laptop off, power it back
on again, and then quickly press the key on your laptop that enters the
computer’s BIOS (or setup) menu – the key differs from manufacturer
to manufacturer, but
F2,
F10, and
DEL are commonly used.
If the laptop will enter the BIOS menu, then the fault is likely with
the keyboard’s software driver, not the keyboard itself.
Leave the
BIOS setup menu and boot back into Windows as normal. Plug in
an external USB keyboard (borrow one if you don’t have one lying
around) and open the Device Manager by typing that phrase into the
Windows search menu and selecting the relevant option.
In the Device manager, look for keyboards, find your laptop’s main
keyboard (normally called Standard PS/2 keyboard), and right-click
on it. Select ‘Uninstall device’. Restart
the computer and Windows
should – fingers crossed – automatically reinstall the keyboard. If
not, right-click on keyboards in the Device Manager again and select
Scan For Hardware Changes. That should reinstall the keyboard
driver and hopefully resolve your problem.
