* character is automatically getting printed in my laptop. How to resolve it?

Question

In my laptop, the '*' charactee is automatically getting printed repeatedly (like when a key is stuck). I checked both the * characters in keyboard (number 8 and the number pad) but they are not stuck. Still, the character '*' repeating itself insanely which is really annoying.

Even when the system is booting up, this happens, as the system beeps continuously because of the character buffer overflows. And whenever I press someother key, the repeating of '*' character stops. But then, it starts again after sometime. :(

Does that mean my laptop keyboard is malfunctioning? Is there any way to resolve this?

Answer 1

Several months ago, my laptop keyboard started to behave oddly, similar to how you described. I could type normally but often pressing one key would result in several other keys being detected as pressed, or the wrong key being pressed. It made typing a chore and relatively impossible, often (though external USB keyboards worked fine).

The laptop was under warranty so I sent it back and they replaced the keyboard. That fixed the issue. I figure that might be the case for you. If it is under warranty, I would recommend getting the keyboard replaced.

Answer 2

Can you remove your keyboard? If so, remove it and try to take a look it there is no short-circuit between any chip, or any connector. This happens a lot when you drop something in the keyboard (like coffee)...

Answer 3

I would tell you to test it under boot to see what happends on BIOS initialization time, precisely to test if it wasn't a keyboard short circuit problem, but you already tested it.

Maybe your next step to test it is removing your keyboard flat cable from it slot and boot again(to see if the problem will happend even without keyboard), or you could also get another keyboard(if you have another one such a external USB based would be fine) and plug it. This will confirm the short circuit on your old one.

In my opinion, you are having a keyboard problem and should thinking about changing it.