5920 Keyboard Issues - Help!

[rob22202]

Hi all.

I bought a 5920 a 6 days ago and, overall, I am very impressed with this machine. It is an incredible feature set for the $1100 price tag. Vista, games, and all my other applications perform exceptionally well.

However, I am about to return it because the keyboard is not working correctly. It seems that depressing a single key more than once in quick succession will often result in some of the characters failing to appear on the screen. It is incredibly frustrating when this issue occurs and you try to backspace to delete it and the backspace key fails repeatedly in the same way.

I tried to quantify the issue buy performing a test where I hit “f” or “s” twice and then . Then, seeing how many of the double letter strikes yielded only one on-screen character. Sometimes, I would be able to do 50 lines of “ff” without any issues. One time I did it and 30 out of 50 attempts yielded only one letter! Most times, I would say that 5% of double letter strikes failed.

The most frustrating thing is that the issue is sporadic, so my driver re-installation and other fix attempts may seem like they work but, the next day, I have issues again. I have my keyboard repeat delay and repeat rate at shortest and fastest.

I called Acer support and, of course, I could not duplicate the problem while I had them on the phone. They did say that they have not had any internal issue reports about the keyboard so far that they knew of.

I booted to a live Ubuntu CD and did not see the issues, so I am thinking that it could be a Vista issue. However, it is sporadic anyway, so who knows if that was an accurate test result.

I have a co-worker who also bought a 5920 on the same day as me and he is about to return his for the same reason.

Has anyone else seen this behavior or have any ideas on what I could try to do to correct it?

[SlantNGo]

Does it happen only on battery? Some Acers have had keyboard issues in the past (which required BIOS updates) while others have issues with the battery detection mechanism in most software. My Acer 5672 still skips while I'm on battery.

[rob22202]

It happens on battery and powered.

I have my power settings set to "high performance" for either mode.

[Andario]

I´m afraid to tell you that this is not the first time I see that kind comments regarding this laptop´s keyboard.

I think I read something about it in this post (don´t remember which page, sorry):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=136314

EDIT: Yes, towards the end of it.

[rob22202]

Pretty funny.

The guy in that thread is my co-worker that bought one.

We bought at the same Best Buy. Perhaps we got a bad batch.

[Andario]

LOL! See, that´s what happens in a 6.5 billion people planet...

Hope it´s a batch issue anyway.

[bigspin]

Originally Posted by rob22202

Pretty funny.

The guy in that thread is my co-worker that bought one.

We bought at the same Best Buy. Perhaps we got a bad batch.

I use this lappy over 5 weeks now.but I didn't have that kind of problem,but can you explain this issue a bit more

[lloco73]

have you tried to make a factory restore by pressing Alt+F10 or using recover DVDs?

regards
lloco73

[darkspark88]

I can imagine what you're saying as my desktop keyboard has the same problem. With that I feel is there is a problem with the USB connector.

I tried the test, typing letters rapidly, starting at "Q" all the way to "/" . Not a single missed letter. Then I tried typing wewewewewewe rapidly with no problems. This really beats me.
Hope you get it sorted though. Seems a shame the issue is a keyboard, since its a minor part of the notebook, but sometimes the smallest things are those you rely on most.

[jakab922]

I have the same laptop and the same problem. Its prolly some hardware failure. I had the problem under vista and gentoo linux as well. There was no way to control it via kbdrate either. I hope I can return it cause it renders the laptop pretty useless for me becouse I just do a lot of typing on it.