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I recently purchased a new laptop and I want to play some games on it. I noticed that I cannot press more than 2 keys at once without the first 2 keys blocking the input of the 3rd. This makes playing FPS games difficult because it requires me to let go of one key before the player will respond to the other key.

I don't know if this is a hardware issue or a driver issue beacuse I can use key combinations that contain 3 keys. For example Ctrl-Shift-F will work correctly in applications that use 3 key combinations.

Does anyone have any advice on how to fix this or what might be causing this?

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This problem is known as "ghosting". As Phoshi says, it's a hardware problem. Unfortunately it's unlikely getting a new copy of the same laptop keyboard would fix the problem. You'd have to get an external keyboard. – RJFalconer Aug 21 '09 at 12:42

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This happens because of the way keypresses are sent to the PC. The keys are all connected via a "matrix" of circuitry. Some combinations work (typically, control and shift and alt and super work with anything), but it's a hardware issue. You may be able to work around it with an external keyboard, though I've never tried using one on a laptop.

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