Apps constantly refreshing multiple times a second following Windows Update

[JBennett1]

Roughly two weeks ago, my computer downloaded and installed a Windows Update. Since then, any app I open displays extremely aberrant non-stop refreshing behavior. Any browser constantly refreshes. When opening Control Panel to uninstall a program, the list of programs constantly refreshes as well. Similar behavior occurs when attempting to uninstall programs through CCleaner. These refreshes occur 1-2 times a second, if not more. 

Perhaps most oddly, when opening a document in Notepad, the system immediately  begins to constantly paste a stream of current timestamps into the document, at a rate of at least 10 a second. 

The touchpad is mostly to completely unresponsive, and will respond for only a few seconds at the most before halting.

When opening Task Manager, a number of processes jump around wildly in terms of CPU usage - it's not uncommon for Task Manager itself to jump from 2% to 20% to 10% to 22% in the span of half a second, and others like Windows Explorer disply the same behavior. 

I'll fess up and admit that my computer likely died during the update, though I'm not 100% certain. While I thought I left it plugged in, I found the computer dead in the morning - the other end of the power cord hadn't been plugged in to the wall.

My assumption is that this must be the source of my troubles, but I haven't been able to resolve. I've scoured the web for similar issues without solving it, and have reset to a fresh version of Windows 10, but the problems continue. 

 As far as I can tell, something is prompting the PC to constantly initiate actions like pasting into Notepad or refreshing the webpage, but I'm at a complete loss as to the cause. Any help would be wonderful - thanks in advance! 

[kyle_b · Accepted solution]

It sounds like your F5 key is physically stuck down.  F5 performs screen refreshes in many applications, I did not know about timestamps in Notepad but I just tried it on mine and lo and behold, F5 prints timestamps in Notepad.

You might try lifting the key or tapping on it to unstick it.  You could also disable the keyboard in Device Manager and plug in a USB keyboard or use the Windows On-Screen keyboard.  If it can't be physically fixed, you could reassign or disable the F5 key within the Windows registry.

[JBennett1]

That did the trick! Leave it to me to look for a complicated solution to a simple problem. The key itself seems fine, but using a program to disable F5 in the registry seems to have resolved the issue. Must be something stuck under the key that I can't see - I'll have to give the keyboard a good dusting. 

Thank you for the assistance! 

[kyle_b]

Great. Yes, the keyboards have been a weak point on the Stream notebooks, I have a Stream 11 and have to hit the spacebar pretty hard to get it to register.