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My windows 7 lenovo laptop keys suddenly stopped working, the F keys and power key, and the mouse works but the rest doesn't, I can't get on to my account since it has password, are there a way to fix this? Thanks.

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  • Try hooking up a USB keyboard to the unit. If it works as expected I would suspect your onboard keyboard needs to be replaced. The part will be relatively cheap ($10-25) and the swap is relatively easy.
    – kisk
    Jun 12, 2016 at 2:11
  • This issue may occur when the keyboard OC fails, Before replacing your keyboard check with a service center.
    – BDRSuite
    Jun 12, 2016 at 2:22

1 Answer 1

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Older Lenovos were built tough and have excellent repair manuals online. I fix my own computers at the component level; if I have a bad card reader, Ill remove it and solder a new one onto the motherboard. I bought my daughter an old Lenovo with Win7 because of their durability. It's been more reliable than my Dell and can take as much memory.

Not knowing the model of your laptop makes it harder to answer your question, but it's probably a hardware issue anyway unless you accidentally re-mapped your keyboard to Martian with some obscure function code.

Trying a USB keyboard first is a great suggestion, or one of the old multi-pin keyboards if you have one on hand. Your Lenovo might have one of those old sockets.

A service center might be able to help, but most of them are focused on new products. The manual I have is for a ThinkPad x201, and it doesn't show any on-board diagnostics that you can access, or any in your situation with an F key without having a disk first.

Your screen name and post suggested you're a novice, so: After consulting a manual, you may be able to carefully pop the keyboard out of the top of the laptop case and see where the ribbon cable attaches to the motherboard. Spills and fiery chats take their toll on those connections, so they work loose sometimes and get corroded.

The manual should show you how to lift up one side of the connector and easily remove the ribbon from the motherboard. You'd then gently clean it, inspect it for wear or corrosion, and put it back together.

If the ribbon cable is cracked, or if it still doesn't work, you can replace the keyboard. But consider that replacing the keyboard may not fix it, so if the USB keyboard works, you may want to skip all of the trouble, get a wireless mouse/keyboard and surf from your recliner.

Sorry for the mixed news, but hope this helps!

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