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Archived This topic has been archived. Information and links in this thread may no longer be available or relevant. If you have a question create a new topic by clicking here and select the appropriate board.
HP Recommended
EliteBook 735 G6

Sometimes my system suddenly "thinks" the left CTRL key is pressed.

But my hand didn't come near that key for minutes.

 

I've found one way to trigger that behavior.

First open a text editor for testing (e.g. notepad) and enter a few words.

Then press the "start call" and "end call" buttons in the upper right very fast alternating.

After about 40 presses, press left or right arrow. You will see, that the cursor will move over whole words instead of single letters, which is the typical behavior if CTRL is pressed.

 

I'm pretty sure this is a bug in the keyboard "firmware".

Those buttons in the upper right - "presentation", "start call" and "end call" actually send three key events which is a quite hacky approach. "presentation" and "end call" send LEFT_CTRL+LEFT_ALT+customkey and "start call" sends LEFT_CTRL+LEFT_WINDOWS+customkey.

So somehow the firmware of the keyboard gets confused and keeps one of that keys "logically" pressed.

 

Actually the "calender" key Fn+F12 is affected too. But it's harder to reproduce because of the need to press Fn.

 

I reproduced that bug with different operating systems:

- Windows 10 version 2004 (fresh installation and even while running the Windows 10 setup DVD)

- Debian-Linux (fresh installation)

And I'm suspecting, that HP is carrying around this bug in it's keyboard firmware for different notebooks (EliteBooks, Spectre, Pavilion) for quite some time:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Left-Ctrl-key-auto-pressing/m-...

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/CTRL-button-virtually-stuck-on...

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Left-ctrl-key-not-working/m-p/...

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/ctrl-key-not-working-properly/...

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebooks-Archive-Read-Only/Control-Key-stuck-ON/td-p/2348431

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebooks-Archive-Read-Only/Random-CTRL-Key-Activation/m-p/640583

 

@HP

Please have a look at this and consider contacting your notebook firmware development department!

Actually I'd think many people would love a BIOS setting to give those keys a more "useful" purpose like "PageUp/PageDown", "Home/End" or "Insert" and just forget about that CTRL+ALT/Windows+Presenation/Call/Calendar stuff.

 

 

Kind regards,

kolAflash

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