Spectre X360 keyboard backslash key not working

[IRL-TB]

Hi, 

I have a 7 month old HP Spectre X360 notebook and cannot get the backslash key to work with the built in keyboard or touchscreen keyboard.  When i use the touchscreen keyboard & press backslash key, it highlights the Ctrl key on the touchscreen keyboard.  When i press on the built in keyboard, i get nothing.

My laptop was recently sent back to HP due to a power failure & returned repaired, so i don't know if this is occuring since it returned or was always like this.

My setttings are English/Ireland and keyboard languages are English/GA and English/UK.  Windows 10 64 bit with all the latest updates.

Any help would be appreciated.

thanks, Terry

[Mrstenter]

Hi @IRL-TB,

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Forums and Welcome.

I have looked into your issue about your HP Spectre x360 Notebook not accepting the backslash. Here is a Windows 10 how to add input Language settings on your Notebook. Sometimes just changing them, restarting and changing them back fixes this issue.

Please get back to me how this goes.

Please click the Thumbs up below to thank me for my efforts!

Thanks.

[IRL-TB]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion but it hasn't worked for me.

I added English UK as a langage along with English Ireland & restarted - no change.

I then made English UK the default, restarted again and no change.

Here's an image attached of settings i have now...

i also noticed in Word/Outlook when i type in 1/2 it auto changes to 1/4 and vice-versa!!   no idea why this is happening.

Any other suggestions?

thanks, Terry

[Mrstenter]

Hi @IRL-TB,

Windows 10 does not support all Language packs. See this section from Microsoft.

Thanks.

[IRL-TB]

Hi,

Can you elabrate on your last post, the link just listed supported languages - not sure what i'm supposed to do next?

All i want is a standard UK keyboard with UK/English or US/English language?

Thanks

[Mrstenter]

Hi @IRL-TB,

The phrase you are referring to in your post is the section that states "Windows and apps might use your country or region to give you local content" , this does not apply to dialect or while typing.

The support language is UK English for Windows 10. You can add input Language settings on your Notebook UK English.

Thanks.

[IRL-TB]

Hi,

Apologies but i really don't follow what you are advising or recommending me to do.

Can you please advise why my backslash key is not working & what steps i can take to fix it?

As it stands my only other course of action is to log this with HP Support again.

Thanks

[StephenJEG · Accepted solution]

Hi

After having taken delivery today of a brand new Spectre 13 Pro today and had exactly the same problem (which frankly for a ~£1500 laptop is completely shameful) I decided to spend 3 hours on this or send the laptop back. I found your posts when I came searching for answers.

Three quick things I'll say here before I get into this (i) I'm not endorsing my "solution" I'm just telling you what worked for me  [ classic "at your own risk disclaimer applies" ], (ii)  I'm in the UK as well and this does seem to be a UK centric issue and (iii) I've been an IT engineer for 20 years so .. well, that's something... I know my own acceptable risk level for any given solution.. this one is classed as  "brute force".

I have my Country / Region set to United Kingdom
I have my Language set to English (United Kingdom)
I only have the United Kingdom QWERTY keyboard layout present

I think it would be ok to have other keyboard layouts present but you must have the keyboard you want to function selected when you get started. So

I downloaded  SharpKeys  from CodePlex  and installed it (http://sharpkeys.codeplex.com/). It's free and is simply a front end of the Windows keyboard scancode registry key.

I ran SharpKeys and the opening screen shouldn't list any existing   From -> To   mappings at this stage.

I Hit   Add
I selected  the   Type Key   option under  Map this key (From key)
I pressed the  \|   key   (don'tattempt to use shift / control / alt just press the   \|   key once)   which in my case was mapped to  Right Ctrl (E0_1D)  and pressed OK
Then from the  To this key (To key)  list I scrolled down and chose   Unknown 0x0056 (00_56)  and pressed OK
Then I chose  Write to Registry  (again at your own risk), select OK and Close

Then I rebooted

What this does is setup a mapping from the seeming unusable  \|  key which the keyboard firmware seems to incorrectly signal is the Right Control Key and map that to scancode 0x0056. How did I find  0x0056?   I ran  SharpKeys  on my desktop machine and pressed the functional  \|  and that's the scancode it gave me back. Whilst that scancode might be "unknown" to  SharpKeys  it is known to the Windows UK keyboard map.

SharpKeys sets up that mapping in the

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts\Scancode Map  BINARY

registry key.

The reboot is needed to make that registry key active and again I will warn you that if that mapping doesn't work for you you could end up with a keyboard mapping that gives you major input problems which take effect almost immediately the system boots up before the logon takes place. It also probably affects keyboards plugged in externally as well as the on-board version. I really didn't care too much because it was either force this to work or return the laptop (with a rather unpleasant note).

Anyway that worked for me.. but what a ridiculous hassle in exchange for a large amount of money for something that should've worked out of the box and not required a couple of decades of knowledge to deal with.

As a note to HP:  You probably shouldn't bank on someone being this determined to be able to get a brand new top of the range laptop to work. Just set the UK keyboard firmware to return scancode  0x0056  when the \|  key is pressed.. it's pretty simple.

Regards,
Stephen

[djenki21]

Thanks, Stephen. Worked perfectly for me on a new Spectre Pro G1 with the same UK English keyboard layout. I noted also that the Alt Gr key on the #~ key did actually produce the reverse solidus but the scancode for that wasn't possible to map in SharpKeys. But mapping the Right Ctrl (E0_1D) to 0x0056 (00_56) worked fine.

I agree with you that HP probably should ship this somewhat high-end model with the correct keyboard mapping for the UK market. They may argue it's a mismatch with Microsoft Windows 10 UK language keyboard but either way they should probably sort it out on behalf of their customers.

[mkraftman]

I had exactly the same problem with a brand new Spectre with a UK keyboard, followed your instructions and it worked perfectly.

Thank you so much!