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I have a crazy problem with my keyboard on Windows 7, that just appeared in the last few months. When I press the letters o, u, and h at the same time, a backslash \ ends up being inserted before the h. Actually if I tap all three simultaneously I just get uo\ or ou. This problem does not occur with any other combination of letters that I have found. "So what?" You might think. Well, actually, in normal, fast typing it end up being a regular nuisance for words like hou\se, thou\gh, hou\r, tou\ch... woah, I actually just found another combo glitch. Apparently u+g+h inserts a y: ugyh. Weird!

I'm really curious what could be causing this. I am using the US English keyboard setup in Windows, althou\gh (aaagh!) I also have the International Phonetic Alphabet keyboard installed. Just tested and the problem happens whichever keyboard I have selected. I don't have another physical keyboard to test with. I am using the Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 v1.0. I have Autohotkey installed, but I turned that off, and I still get the same problem. I can't think of any other things that might cause this...

UPDATE:

CRAZY! I haven't changed anything on my computer except maybe some Windows updates were installed, but now the keyboard glitches have shifted! OUH and UGH work fine now but I have discovered that OUN produces OU<N (or ou,n lowercase), and there is another one which conveniently shows up in password I frequently use for sites I don't care about. The weird thing about the password one is that it all happens on one row, which makes the accepted answer questionable. It involves some symbol keys though.

UPDATE 2:

Now the old problems are back again, with the new problems! Aaaaagh! Actually, there is one slight variation, now 'oun' produces 'ou,' instead of 'ou,n' What is going on?!?!?

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  • Do you have another system you can try plugging the keyboard into, to see if it's an issue with the keyboard?
    – user169501
    Apr 16, 2015 at 15:52
  • Not really. I suppose I could take it to another computer somewhere though.
    – Moss
    Apr 16, 2015 at 17:06

2 Answers 2

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This sounds like a "ghost key" or "phantom key" problem. Keyboard matrices usually have keys which share traces and they use {magic} to decide which keys have been pressed. Sometimes there is uncertainty when multiple keys are pressed and you wind up with certain keys locked out and in other cases phantom keypresses appear.

see the answer to this question for more detail.

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    This looks like the problem. This article made it clearer microsoft.com/appliedsciences/antighostingexplained.mspx. The question then is why did I just recently start noticing it when I have had this keyboard for 5 years. Maybe some physical wear and tear making the problem more pronounced? Maybe some lag on my system is making it happen more? I have noticed an increase in DOuble CApitals too. But that has been happening for longer, and I just attributed it to me being lazy. Maybe that is all it is? Seems weird for my typing habits to start changing after all these years though.
    – Moss
    Apr 16, 2015 at 17:03
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Sounds crazy, but faulty USB ports or dust and debris in the USB ports can cause the keyboard to malfunction. What you need to do is open your computer case and clean the USB port in which the keyboard is using. Also, try using a different USB port. Check if sticky keys are enabled through Control Panel (just search sticky keys in control panel).

Lastly, try installing the driver for the keyboard from the manufacturers website.

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  • However presumably if this was the case, it would be a more general problem & not affect just some keys?
    – Toby Allen
    Apr 19, 2015 at 6:56

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