This might be catalogued as random stupidity
from my part, but Binging for it didn't really bring me to the information so
here goes. I'm currently working on a 3 year old laptop that has been
travelling with me pretty much around the world. 16GB, Core i7, 2xSSD, it never
lets me down. Yesterday while I just stepped off the plane and arrived at the
customer, booted my pc and cleaned up the inbox something strange happened. All
of a sudden my keyboard stopped working. Everything else worked fine, but
typing just wasn't happening.
As any highly trained IT professional I of
course resorted to the one and only possible solution to fix this: hitting
every key on the keyboard, with the same "schwung" as professional
piano players go from the low note to the high note. And to my surprise at
times there was a key popping up. So maybe it wasn't the keyboard. Again, I am
a highly trained professional, so solution number two: reboot. In all honesty,
this would be the first time that I actually had to reboot Windows 8 to get
something to work again. Reboot, the bitlocker unlock window comes up, I type
in my code and the keyboard works fine. Problem solved. Logged in to windows,
and the same problem comes up again.
No worries, I am still a highly trained
professional so I open OneNote and after my piano move I resorted to option
three. Push it until it works. I just pressed a key for a long time and to my
surprise the character appeared. So I went to the keyboard settings for the
repeat speed, but changing that did not resolve it. There was only one thing I
could still think about. Ease of Access settings. And there it was: The filter
keys were enabled. I don't know how I did it, as the settings were still set to
show a warning when the Filter Keys are enabled, but for some reason I did not
see the warning or I pressed Enter when it came up without realizing it.
So when you are in the situation of your
keyboard no longer working in Windows 8, press a key for a long time and see if
it comes up. If it does, that it is probably the filter keys. To go to
the settings, press windows key for a long time (filter keys is on) till you
get the metro menu if you aren't there yet, press f for a long time, press i
for a long time... (you get what the other actions are...) until you have put
in Filter Keys in your search window. Click on Settings, Ignore Repeated Key
Strokes using Filter Keys and untick Turn on Filter Keys
