Bizarre laptop keyboard problem. Need advice!

[dante]

Some family have a crazy laptop problem that I can't figure out; and it's truly unique.

So the top function row and space bar don't work.  But what's truly bizarre is when a USB keyboard is plugged in the same keys also fail!

Has anyone ever heard of something like this?  Any ideas?

It's possible that this symptom developed after Windows was reinstalled however I can't get a thumbs up to know if it was tested after reinstallation - it was kind of put on the back burner during a recent move.

[Tom_Kazansky]

weird...
one thing I can think of is the window registry, I once changed the window registry to swap Control and Capslock (you can google about it)
but you just reinstalled window so your window registry should be clean.

have you tried the "on screen keyboard" (go to Start \ Run, "osk", Enter) ?
(oh well, I don't remember the behaviour of "on screen keyboard" after changing the window registry...  )

[Mechboards]

Try changing the locale of the keyboard to US/UK (or to any other country) to reinstate the layout or something.

[dante]

have you tried the "on screen keyboard" (go to Start \ Run, "osk", Enter) ?
(oh well, I don't remember the behaviour of "on screen keyboard" after changing the window registry...  )

I haven't tried that yet.  The laptop is 60 miles away.  I will have access to it next week.

Try changing the locale of the keyboard to US/UK (or to any other country) to reinstate the layout or something.

I will give that a shot.

The other thing I am going to try once I have access to it is try to load a live Linux distro and see if it is OS related.  If that doesn't work the lappy is truly fubar.

[dante]

So I got a hold of the lappy.  Basically I got misinformation because an external keyboard WILL work fine.  What's going on is a Windows 10ism that forces the function key on.  So to access the numbers/spacebar you have to press FN first.

There are solutions but none of them has worked out.  I'm just going to recommend they use an external keyboard.

[tp4tissue]

Windows 10 spyware has gone TOO FAR.. TOO FAR I'd say.