Issue with jammed arrow keys

[JoaoPMendes]

Hello there.

I have been having a frustrating issue with my brand new gaming laptop (booted it up today) while playing a racing game (so far, the only I've tested). Sometimes it involves fast tapping on the arrow keys to steer more precisely, but I've been noticing that from time to time the keys seems to get jammed and (using this game as an example) my car just goes straight ahead even when I'm pressing the left/right arrows. It almost seems as if the those specific keys stop working for a while, or alternatively, the forward arrow key kust gets jammed for whatever reason?... Before you ask, yes, I did turn off the filter & sticky keys with no avail. I have also tried with a spare external keyboard and the problem is not noticeable. The issue only when using the laptop's keyboard. 

I play this game competitively online with other members of the community and none of them experience this issue, so my suspicions obviously fall on the hardware...

Is this a known issue, is there any way to fix it, and what more information can I provide?... Its rather frustrating having just swaped my old laptop in which the game ran smoothly for a supposedly far superior machine only to have this happen and completely lower the quality of gaming experience. 

[JoaoPMendes]

Just found a thread that sums up exactly what I've been experiencing: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gaming-Notebooks/Keyboard-quot-sticks-quot-sometimes-while-playing-gam...

Some help?

[Photoray002]

Hello JoaoPMendes 

Are you using Windows 10 v1809? If so, is your Synaptics driver up to date? Should be this one... 2.1.9.1

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/omen-by-hp-15-dc0000-laptop-pc-series/203...

Also, did you go into the Synaptics Properties and disable SmartSense?

If not, give it a try.

Go to windows All Settings>Devices>Touchpad and follow the images below.

Does it help?

[JoaoPMendes]

I always disable the touchpad when playing racing games because there's a high chance I inadvertedly touch it. 

I did what you described above, I also tried installing the most recent BIOS (as I've read in other thread that it might be the root of the issue) and so far nothing. Kinda running out of options here as to what I can do other than just call it a day and take my brand new gaming laptop which I bought exclusively to play games to the store I bought it from and ask whether I can replace it or not.

To sum it up, what I did so far:

- Disbled the touchpad and Synaptics Smartsense;

- Installed the newest BIOS (currently F.08-02/21/2019);

- Turned off sticky keys and all the other Ease of Access options that could interfere with the keyboard.

... This is really frustrating for me.

My last resort would be to fiddle around with the keyboard's repeat delay and repeat rate and figure whether that's what's causing it. What are the prefered settings I should use?

... Lastly, even though I've seen multiple threads with similar but unsolved issues (as I've posted above), any advice is greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

JoãoPMendes

[Photoray002]

Well, if its truly the touchpad causing the arrow keys to not work because the pad is getting touched, you could try the registry hack. If you're not familiar with messing in the registry, I would encourage you to enable Windows Restore Points and create a restore point before doing anything, just for safety.

You can back up the registry also.

The hack is... Type regedit in the Windows Search bar and choose to open the registry as an Administrator.

Then go to  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTP\Defaults, and set the value of the first 3 string entries of PalmKms…, to 0.

You can double click on them to edit them.

If that doesn't work, you might have something else going on that I wouldn't know about.