A Place For Stephen

I’ve just got to tell you how I wasted an hour and a half of my life today…

A customer brought in her computer with a problem… the keyboard just didn’t want to work - at all!

Simple enough you think… so shut down, swap to another keyboard, and restart!

Nope! Same problem.

Hmmm… download and install my favourite crime fighting software - Spybot - and see if that can find a nasty piece of software that could be doing it.

Nope. Not that either.

Another restart to install some windows updates, and then it’s time to hit Google - with a whole string of different keywords that tried to describe the problem…

Eventually, I found one very obscure reference to “filter keys” (never heard of them before), so off to the Vista “Control Panel” and the “Ease of Access Centre” to change how the keyboard works. Under the section entitled “Make it easier to type” is an option to “Turn on Filter Keys”.

Now their purpose is to:

ignore, or slow down brief or repeated keystrokes and adjust keyboard repeat rates.

Well that certainly works! Most normal people (touch typists included) would certainly have “brief” keystrokes… otherwise it’d take forever to write anything!

So next time your computer goes “beep” every time you press a key, and it looks like your keyboard is locked up… you know it’s only your computer making life “easier” for you

P.S. It seems my customer had pressed the space bar several times to insert a few extra blanks into a word doc… after which the computer decided it should ask if she wanted to turn a “feature” turned on to “improve” the performance of the computer.

Yeah… Right!

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