shot in the dark computer tech support question

i'm just casting about for ideas here, since my first call to a tech support line was absolutely no help and i don't want to have to take my computer in to be 'fixed' anywhere for such a seemingly minor thing and am not really sure even what verbiage to use to do a search on this kind of problem

anyway: I have a little 'notebook' laptop i got as a 2nd computer recently to use or writing stuff, travel, etc. I was dumb enough to leave it out within my toddler's reach and he somehow hit some sequence of keys that totally rearranged how the keyboard works, and I'm not stuck on the log-in screen and can't even put in my password to unlock the computer or try to do anything about it. most of the letter keys do nothing, and weirdly if i hit 'backspace' it puts in characters (that i can't see) as if i'm typing in letters for the password. i tried pulling up the on-screen keyboard and keying letters with the mouse but even that doesn't work, same shit happens.

i don't expect anyone to leap to my rescue here and know exactly how to fix this, but maybe someone can at least tell me what words to use to describe the problem? or if not feel free to use this thread for lols, it's all good.

james!

mac or windows? (xp or vista?)

windows 7

the worst thing about this is while i was on the phone for the (completely useless) tech support call, James fell and hit his head on a coffee table and got a cut above his eye, it was really awful and bloody. those things just kinda happen and me being on the phone had no thing to do w/ it, but i still felt terrible that i was distracted and trying to do something else when it happened and didn't respond as quickly as i might have otherwise.

any chance you can plug in a temporary keyboard to see if that works?

but if the on screen keyboard does the same, probably wont be any different

i plugged in the external keyboard from my other computer and that didn't seem to work at all, like didn't even type anything on that

This might be him hitting SHIFT+ENTER a lot, which will create lots of carriage returns. Click on the text box, press SHIFT+A to select everything in the box, then backspace to delete. Then type in the password again and it should be fine.

CTRL+A, not SHIFT-A

Thanks for the try, but nah, doesn't work. Like I said, most keys aren't doing remotely what they're supposed to do -- backspace type something, h deletes it, everything's all mixed up. doing some googling around about the notebook (ASUS Eee PC 1001PX) and this appears to be a somewhat common problem that is often solved by removing the battery and then putting it back in and restarting, but the battery is not really easily removed and i'm afraid to even mess with that. looking more and more like i'll just have to take this somewhere to get looked at.

That does remind me, my laptop keyboard (5y/o Acer) only works when you take the battery out and have it plugged straight into the mains, so I can well believe that. Sorry about your loss!

I just mashed the keyboard in frustration and now the backspace works at a backspace and the letter keys are working, but they still don't seem to be the right keys since the password won't work still (although again it's got the thing where i can't see what letters i'm typing in, so i'm kind of in the dark). in a weird way, feels like progress.

ok cool, i was able to get the login right and use the notebook, and most of the keys work right but some are wonky and put in numbers where letters should be. watch this, i'm going to re-type this exact post on the notebook and you can see the difference, just for shits and giggles.

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might have numlock on?

in fact almost certainly

Fn + Scroll lock ?

maybe mash the keyboard a few more times?

try rebooting, if you haven't already done that

yeah i'm rebooting now. the shitty thing before when i couldn't login was i couldn't even shut it down or reboot, so i was just keeping it unplugged and trying to run out the battery.

ok i rebooted and i'm gonna re-type this post on the notebook in a minute and see what happens...

you can't do a hard shutdown with the power button?

xp ah well

62 5 reb66ted and 5'0 g6nna re-t4*e th5s *6st 6n the n6teb662 5n a 05n4te and see what ha**ens...

f4c2

hey look the fn scroll lock thing worked! thank you Ste!!!!!!!!!!!

this was quite a little adventure, you've all been lovely.

James is waking up now, i should go see how he's doing with his little ouchie.

yay

recurring laptop PC problem.... I took the battery out last night, nothing got fixed. Anyone else had/done this?

http://www.vistaheads.com/forums/windows-vista-home-premium/198630-comupter-stuck-logging-off-screen-hours-help.html

I love how some dude actually fixed his problem by bashing on the keyboard enough

(sorry, no idea morbs)

yeah i thought about just picking it up and shaking it

(no)

so it goes into logging off when you power it on?

yep!

Then I read something about defragging your hard drive, which I never fucking heard of.

one time at a party someone changed a friend of mines phones language to japanese, lol

it sounds like this is a common problem with vista.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/1403-63-windows-hangs-login-stays-screen

maybe upgrade or downgrade? vista is known for being the stephen baldwin of the windows family.

I've had this Compaq for almost 3 years, no problems like this at all til a couple months ago

my problem isn't staying on the Welcome screen, it's stuck on "Logging off"

can you get into safe mode by holding f8 after you power it on?

haven't tried yet

one site (fantrax.com) isn't working for me but is working if I remote into my office PC and no one else appears to be having an issue.
I've changed from Google DNS to OpenDNS servers on router and iMac, flushed DNS cache on iMac, rebooted both, erased all browsing history for Chrome, tried Safari, turned off IPv6 just in case. Zero clue what to try next.

fixed it by connecting to a VPN (PrivateInternetAccess) - so I'm guess it's a Time Warner (my cable Internet) problem somewhere upstream and will miraculously fix itself one day?