Bizarre issue with keys being pressed (or not)

Question

I'm having a variety of weird issues on Win7 64-bit that I suspect may be connected:

• The Start key on the keyboard doesn't work. I've tried two keyboards, it works on neither of them.

• When I press "Alt" within a window, the little _ signs flicker under the menu names for a second, then vanish. I have to hold down Alt and press F to bring up the File menu - I can't just press Alt, then press F a second later.

• Tooltips appear when I mouse over things, then instantly vanish.

• I used Spy++ to spy on what was happening to a program when the tooltip vanished, and the message log is full (as in, there are pages and pages of them) of these messages:

<01044> 00012436 P WM_KEYDOWN nVirtKey:00FF cRepeat:1 ScanCode:1E fExtended:1 fAltDown:0 fRepeat:1 fUp:0

The best part? There is no key "00FF". A reference in the MSDN documentation says that it's "reserved". No key on the keyboard is actually being physically pressed.

Does anyone have any idea what on earth could be going on? :/ I'm running a virus scan right now...

Answer 1

Were you using PS/2 or USB keyboards? If the latter, then I'd look at your motherboard (or the PS/2 adapter) being at fault. If it's USB, then I'd look at the chipset drivers. x64 Windows can be flaky with the wrong drivers.

If the keyboard is not misbehaving in a different OS (Windows x32, or even a Linux LiveCD), then it's a driver problem.

Answer 2

So it turned out that I am a moron - there was another keyboard connected to the computer under my desk, and something was pressing on one of the keys. As soon as I moved that keyboard, everything started working great. Oops!