Recently, a few of the keys on my keyboard have just stopped working. Not sure what could be the problem. I have an Acer Aspire 5536. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened in the past few days... expect for me spilling a bowl of milk with cereal near my laptop. However, only a few drops of milk hit the laptop screen, and not the actual keyboard, but around an hour or two after this, the keys stopped working. Anyone know what could have happened to make these keys not work? The keys are not sticky or anything. It is just that nothing happens when I press on them.

The keys that do not work are:
Z
V
B
Spacebar
" '
Down Arrow Key
Left Arrow Key

As you can see, it's all in the lower area.

It took me a very long time writing all of this (using an on-screen keyboard at many times)... so any help would be appreciated.

Is it old? Acer laptops aren't of great quality.

I'm using one right now that's 8 months old, and my battery doesn't charge past 63%.

In contrast to my mom's Dell, which is over twice as old and works fine.

Not that old. About 7 or 8 months old maybe. I do, however, regret getting an Acer laptop.

It could just be the age. As I said, Acer laptops aren't great. My keys all still work, but I do have my battery issue.

And I think my warranty was only 2 months or something... lol.

How would I fix the keys then?

If you want to just "tough it out" you can remap keys to make hotkeys for the keys that are currently broken.

http://www.autohotkey.com/

Alternatively try contacting them and they may send you a new keyboard, though they will probably charge you for it if it's out of warranty.

You can try taking it apart and seeing if something is physically wrong with it, but I'm not sure how easy this is on Acer laptops.

The only thing you could do is see if it's under warranty, I guess. I'm not sure how to fix keys that won't work.

Thanks. I think I will do this until I can get someone to look at my computer.

7 or 8 months? you're still under warranty. Send it in for repairs.

How would I do so?

If the warranty idea doesn't pull through I'd be happy to make the binds for you. Just tell me what shortcuts you want to go to which keys and I'll make the script.


Contact Acer's customer service.

Call up Acer support, tell them your keyboard isn't working. You'll be forced to answer some stupid questions and do some stupid things. They'll tell you to send it in for repairs, you'll put it in a box and ship it (you'll have to pay for shipping because Acer is lame like that).

I'd back up the hard drive before sending it in, though. (well, me specifically would never be in your situation as I'd never buy an Acer laptop (or probably any laptop ever again), but if I did I'd wipe and factory default the hard drive before sending it in)

Definitely.

I will contact Acer after I get it checked out by a friend of mine (in a few days). But for now... I need the Spacebar to go to the ` key (under the esc button).

My laptop thinks that the left shift key is stuck, even though the actual key itself is fine. This was/is a big problem, because holding down shift when turning it on causes it to boot up in safe mode, which requires a password that I couldn't type in because everything is in upper case. Not only that, but if I did manage to get the computer to start up normally, holding down shift causes everything on a mac to slow to a crawl for some reason.

Anyway... I got an external keyboard and it seems to work fine, except I still have to hold the "command" key when I'm starting it up in order to prevent it from going into safe mode.

I am thinking of just using an external keyboard, but I do use my laptop on my couch in the living room, so I am not sure how comfortable that would be.

I am going to try cleaning my computer right now with a keyboard cleaner thing since it is pretty dirty and dusty.

It's not really all that comfortable. I can't actually have my laptop on my lap anymore unless I'm doing something that doesn't require a keyboard (which I guess is a good thing in a way because now theres no chance of overcooking my nuts). If you have a coffee table or something in your living room though you could just set up your laptop there.

Alternatively, you could get your laptops keyboard replaced, but that can be pretty expensive. I think it would be worth it though if you ever want to conveniently use your laptop in a caffe or at school. I was told that replacing my laptops keyboard would cost me about $200 (my warranty expired a month before the keyboard broke. Typical).

So just put this in an autohotkey file:

`::space

Looks like my warranty has ended. What seemed like 8 months with this laptop was actually around 2 years.

can you combat the shift with a caps lock?

Where exactly do I put that?

Your laptop is running Vista Home, yes? You'll need to do something about that in the next 7 months 10 days anyway. Time to save up for a new laptop me thinks.

Using Windows 7.

Thank you. I got it. It is still pretty hard to press space though.