DV8000 Series - Keyboard problems. Anyone else?

[altierior]

my dv6000 keyboard is warped. there is a slight wave in the keyboard elevation; it is highest at the 'g' key and lowest at the right 'ctrl' key.

it is working fine, but it is annoying and just yesterday i noticed that there are light marks on the screen where the highest keys are apparently making contact when the notebook is closed.

i bringing it back to Best Buy today. hopefully they will exchange it for a new unit with a flat keyboard.

[WeAreNotAlone]

Haven't been around in a while,

But I have a suggestion or two for those seeking service..

I just had a HP/Compaq NX6325 serviced due to play in the display hinges- fix was to replace display assembly since HP does not stock /sell hinges seperately (As far as I know)

Here's the tip(s):

1: As I've suggested before write up a document, with attached pics of unit to prove condition of unit- Go hand in hand with doc/pics to local bank and have the document notarized, most banks will do this for free.

You might want to take pics with a CURRENT newspaper in background- Or say some breaking news on CNN to prove condition..

(WHY- because alot of people have sent their unit in for service- receiving it back damaged._ HP later saying the damage was pre-existing.)

2: Try to find a LOCAL HP authorized repair center.... and have the unit repaired LOCALLY so you can TALK DIRECTLY with the TECH.

I took my unit in, so tech could verify hinges indeed had play in them, he ordered part, it coming in overnight- and it was installed around noon, while I waited....

Beats having to "mail" a unit in.... and get it back not repaired /and or damaged...

.

[jose62]

Well.... a year went by, my warranty dissapeared with no response from HP Tech support and my dv8000 keyboard is locking up in ways I never thought possible. Not a springy and slow return as it did when I frist bought it and was told by HP's tech support to download a famous drive fix for the keyboard... no, now the keys just stay down and locked!

Of course I had to use a wireless keyboard and mouse to make it work, but that annoying GO BACK! of the cursor with that infernal beeping still shows up and it drives me crazy... pounding the keyboard keys seems to appease the beast. This has been the most expensive piece of equipment I have ever purchased, and also the worst!

I know I have to eat it, cuz I wouldn't wish this monster on my worst enemy. My kids stay away from it (a blessing in disguise) because they hate it.

The only good thing I can say about it is that the new sound driver did fix the ****ty tinny sound coming from those Altec Lansing speakers.

Is there any class action suit we can start with HP to at least get a decent laptop for our money????

[Javelier5]

I am new here, so please excuse me if there is another place I should post this, due to the model of computer I'm using... I have a DV5140us running XP MCE, with 2.0GHz AMD 64 processor and 2GB RAM. I have been experiencing some of the keyboard issues y'all have been discussing, and i thought for the purpose of helping identify the issue, I would add my 2¢ worth...

PHYSICALLY, there are no problems with my keyboard. No sticking keys, no touchy responses, no warping, no flexing, etc. However, I do get the keystroke irregularities. For my system, the single most prolific problem is the shift key, and 2nd most common is the missing strokes.

The Shift key likes to logically "stick," where it will register as still pressed, even though it is not. Usually I have to tap it at least twice to get it to "un-stick." Hence, it will continue to type capitals even after I have let go of the key. This also means that if I have the Caps Lock on, it will type as off, since the Shift key will invert the capitalizations from the setting of the Caps Lock key. This state sticking also happens periodically with the CTRL key, and a couple of times I have seen it happen with the Alt key. With the Shift key, it is usually the left side that is registering as still pressed, but that doesn't mean much since I mostly use the left Shfit key...

But more prevalent is the ignored Shift. I'm sure if you look through this message, there will be a few places where I typed the word "I" and had it come out as lower-case. Since a lot of capital letters get used, the shift key giving problems becomes the more obvious issue, and not the Ctrl or Alt keys...

The shift key not registering is just another symptom of the problem where keys in general will not register. This can be any key at all. And due to the length of time I've used this already, I can pretty certainly say that it's an issue with the communications between the keyboard unit and the system bus. The most obvious clues have been when i will be typing along at high-speed, and 3 letters in a row won't respond. That just means that the keyboard wasn't being listened-to by the system for that fraction of a second, and apparently it doesn't have a built-in buffer to capture the keys that weren't heard... It could also explain the sticking Shift key, if the keyboard is sending a command to the system (which doesn't see it) to tell it to turn the Shift key state to OFF.

In all, I lose about 1 keystroke out of every 30, and about 1 out of 6 Shift key presses.

Once in a while I will also get double-struck spacebar responses.

I have gotten to the point in typing to friends where I just ignore the fact that letters didn't get capitalized, or that words are missing letters. People can usually figure it out, and I'm just tired of backing up to fix them all; its time consuming as much as aggravating. This has become a big problem, though, when i am trying to type business e-mails or letters and words come out misspelled and with improper calculation. It makes me look like I do not exercise proper English... Not good when doing official correspondence!

So for me as well, I have found that an external keyboard never has these issues. Again, it is likely that the external keyboard has a buffer for capturing keystrokes and will re-transmit them to the system until they get recognized, whereas the built-in keyboard does not. this is just an educated guess, of course; it could also have to do with which bus is listening to the built-in keyboard, while the USB has no such issues.

And as for the other input device, the touchpad, it freaks out when there is a heavy load on the system. Sometimes it will be sluggish to respond, and at other times it relocates itself suddenly to other parts of the screen. I suspect this issue is more related to Microsoft's bloatware hogs causing interference with the touchpad driver, particularly since this happens the most during the use of the Media Center. Again, though, an external mouse doesn't experience these issues.

The only other annoyance I have experienced with this laptop is that the touchpad is located centered on the system, which ends up resting under your right thumb, and you will accidentally be "touching" the touchpad, and the cursor will relocate and the screen will scroll when you least expect it.

Other than the pervasive keyboard problem, the rest of the unit is very nice and enjoyable!

[NumbersGeek]

I haven't read through all the posts yet, but wanted to add my two cents. I bought my DV8000 in Apr 2006. very early on I noticed the keyboard would tweak in ways I never knew before. there were a lot of what I thought were bells and whistles on this computer an i thought that perhaps I would hit a key combo that turned the CAPS LOCK on. It was completely annoying as I do alot of IMing for work and i dind't want to be "yelling" back to folks so I would sit and wait it out and eventually the key board would cycle through and be back to normal.

since I don't use my laptop too much, when I did use it and noticed the space bar would not respond to the touch and a few other keys did not repspond I got annoyed...I'm not good about going back and re-reading my text before I sent it off. I soon learned this was most important if I didn't want to come across as a complete incompetent.

I finally broke down one day when I thought I had nothing else to do and called HP support. I got the India run around and I kid you not 70 minutes later I was finally hooked up with someone who could actually have a non-robot conversation with me. (When a techie gives you a phone number and pronounces the dashes, you know he's from another planet!). I reluctenly sent my computer in for a keyboard replacement.

Knowing all the problems I had with the keyboard since I bought the computer and knowing I only had about a month left on the warrenty when i sent it in back in march 2007, I specifically asked if the 'warrenty clock' for the keyboard repair was starting over at zero for another 12 months. I was told by the tech that yes, repairs made under the warrenty were covered for an additional 12 months.

About a week after I got the computer back, I noticed the CAPS LOCK problem again. Knowing I had a full 12 months again and not wanting to spend the time or energy to talk to someone in India, I let it go until this morning when I couldn't take it any longer!

I called and after 35 minutes robot like conversation I was told that They were sorry but the technician gave out wrong informaiton and my new keyboar repair was not covered under warrenty.

That led me to this site where I am hoping to find a bios update fix, a new driver or something that will address this annoying problem. I wish I had never bought this HP laptop, while I love the 17" screen and 10-key keypad, the India support is enough to drive you crazy and this thing is just too heavy to lug through an airport! i knew it weighed 8 pounds, but who knew EIGHT POUNDS WAS THAT HEAVY!?

[NumbersGeek]

I just found a quick fix that I will try the next time my keyboard get stuck in the CAPS LOCK/CSHIFT LOCK mode, I will hit the Function and NUM LOCK and that is supposed to free it up. Am going to have the bios updated as soon as i get my desktop back. as far as the keybpard replacement, I wouldn't wast your money, I had mine replaced and it dind't solve the probelm. I think it is a software, not hardware isue. As you can see from thi smessage, the keys don't always respond to the touch....and i'm not a particularyly fast typist!

[Tommm]

I want to chime in that the problem exists on my "special edition" L2000, or Lance Armstrong model. I have of late been able to coerce keyboard to work but it is terribly frustrating trying to log in with a password not knowing the state of the keyboard. It is abhorrent that HP has not solved this issue. I advise a lot of people on PC problems, usually solving their problems and advising on purchases but I will NEVER EVER again let anyone I have access to purchase an HP Laptop again. Those of you who feel good that your keyboards are working I am happy for you. Have a happy time. Mine worked for a full year before succumbing to the problem. It is not specific to any particular HP model as far as I've been able to research. I have found that pressing shift scroll Key combination sometimes puts the thing back to a working state … but not always. The problem seems almost to behave as one would expect a virus to behave.

[Tommm]

I think my HP L2005CO Keyboard is attempting to entertain me ... At my last boot up I was able to hit the Shift Pause Combination and get it to come out of Capitalization mode. Then I would count and a few seconds, and without touching anything at all - it would go back into Capitalization mode all on its own. I'd find out by typing again. Shift Pause would work for a few seconds and then BANG back to crazy caps mode. Great feature huh, especially if you have a complex password to log in to Win XP? Why with the XP feature of hiding the actual keystrokes the security on your PC is absolutely rock solid. No one can get in, not even you! Sometimes in the middle of typing at the user name login screen it would arbitrarily change to caps mode again right between keystrokes.

I'm a EE as a professional and use IT equipment for my job (testing hardware) routinely. I'm good at debugging a lot of problems but this is beginning to be too much. Could it be a bad ground in the keyboard? A conection problem (90% of problems) or Could it be bad keyboard/synaptics touchpad driver software? A bad keyboard? Some Virus in the system? Been reading this thread since 2006 and it's all the same problems. A reinstall of the newest synaptics driver on HP's site seemed to work for a while but then it stopped working. When I think about it I was never sure if I completly powered off when I thought it was working. I believe I only soft rebooted upwards of 5-6 times. Its possible that the keyboard got stuck in a good state all the while I was rebooting - fooling me into believing that the HP site synaptics driver I was using worked. In the end it really didn't

Today I'm back to Microsofts UPDATE site where I see they're offering a new synaptics touchpad driver dated 9/14/2007. I've Booted up twice from cold start with this driver and have been able to log into my system with the password in the right caps state and keyboard working. We'll see if this has fixed it and more importantly whether the FIX lasts for anything longer than today.

But really, 2 YEARS of posts and still people complaining ??? Wow HP, you make great Spectrum Analyzers (maybe another division) but why would keep loyal to a computer with at bad input device? That is about where the rubber meets the road guys, your customers finger tips - which by the way is also the place where they reach into their wallet.

Well, good luck to all...hope the keyboard gets fixed before everyone goes off to Sony or Lenovo or Dell which is easy to do once you become convinced that you've been abandoned by HP. This is not an 8000 or 5000 issue, mine was the L2000 series "Lance Armstrong" Live Strong model. You sure have to be to own this laptop

[makoona]

Does the F.53 Bios for DV8000z fix the keyboard issue?

The bios upgrade DID actually work on my dv8000. Sometimes the keyboard lags a little bit, wont keep up, but the shift key locking in caps and other weird stuff doesn't happen anymore.

[vkeaney]

I have a Dell cpx laptop. Recently when i would type, letters 'i' and 'l' would duplicate. I researched google and found people with similar problems and what they tried to do to counteract their prolem including adding new keyboards and again having problems with new keyboards. I found a simple solution all for under $8 - a can of air spray sprayed under the offending key cleaned the key and got rid of the duplication. And, here i was planning on buying a new laptop! The tip was given me by a hardware engineer. Thank you Allen!!