VeeshanVault

Okay Wife running XPsp2 her 1 (one) key (you know the one next to tilde and before the 2/@ key) stops working but shift-1 works for the exclamation point perfectly, numpad 1 works also. So I said to hell with it, and replaced the keyboard, same problem with oob new keyboard, so tried known good ( the one I am typing on now) same problem.

I have tried unistalling keyboard driver, letting xp rediscover, no joy, even downloaded an app called smartkey to remap, but that makes the 1 key work ( by mapping to the numpad 1) but that breaks exclamation.

Any ideas?

Oh yeah, the bloody thing works in safe mode LOL never seen anything like it

scan for viruses/malware

Housecall.antivirus got nothing, AVG antivirus got nothing, Spybot S&D clean, Adaware clean.

LOL I am mystified.

Did you try hijackthis?

http://www.download.com/HijackThis/3000 ... ag=lst-0-1

maybe try manually examining the registry entries related to the keyboard, or using some tool to scan the registry and check for anomalies?

go buy a new computer, guaranteed fix

Sabek wrote:Did you try hijackthis?

http://www.download.com/HijackThis/3000 ... ag=lst-0-1

Yeah it is clean, even tried the original keyobard on another system to make sure it was not bad and screwing things up but it works fine.

I checked the reg entries as they are listed on the M$ knowledge base, and they appear fine.

format c: /u

unfortunately, a fresh copy of XP would be quicker than figuring this out.

I keep all of my data on separate HDs than my OS HD in order to be able to format or reinstall windows if something bad happens without losing much.

I may start making images of my little 36 GB HD due to all the programs installed these days for easy recovery. Installing all of the programs and hacks is kind of a time killer.

yeah with the amount of storage you have, you should make a bootable emergency partition on some drive that you mount and plant that image right back on your windows drive.

have that image updated routinely, etc.

Im a big fan of Norton Utilities myself... hell I have the AV but the utilities is teh win.

Voronwë wrote:yeah with the amount of storage you have, you should make a bootable emergency partition on some drive that you mount and plant that image right back on your windows drive.

have that image updated routinely, etc.

You bastard. I spent all Friday evening researching Drive Backup software. After searching the newsgroups, I had my pick of any backup solution available (I guess pirates need to restore their systems often because the newsgroups are littered with backup and disk recovery apps : )

I went with Acronis True Image 8.0 and am a happy camper. A few notes on my experience:

-get an image backup solution with an incremental backup option. For those that don't know, what this allows you to do is just backup/add the changes since your last image backup instead of backing up the entire image each time. This does two beneficial things. It allows you to make quick backups so you do them more often and also gives you stages so you can name the incremental backups and restore the image you want. (pre Windows Vista dual boot install, pre IE 7 install, etc)

-I'm glad I chose the tiny 36gb Raptor as my OS drive. I had about 28gb on it including all of my applications (which is a buttload). It only took 20 minutes to back the entire 34gb image to my terastation (gigalan) and with "normal" compression setting, the image occupies 21gb of space. Wow. I should have done this a LONG time ago. So fast, so easy. The initial estimate by the program was 7 hours so ignore the estimate given.

-True Image makes it easy to mount an image an browse it like any other HD if you want to access individual files without restoring the entire drive/partition. Mounting/Unmounting takes about 1 second. Nice. Password protect your image if desired. I did. Easy enough.

-True Image is the only drive backup that offers something called a "safe zone" what that allows you to do is create a hidden partition where you can save an image that the OS can't see (so you can't accidentally delete it) I chose not to do that but used a small 40mb Safe Zone Partition to set up the recovery files so along with the quick and easy CD recovery bootable CDs True Image let me create, I can also load the recovery software by selecting it at the bootup screen by hitting F11 before you get to the OS menu (if you dual boot).

I'm impressed. Glad Voro guilt tripped me into getting this done. Now I can go nuts installing beta crap like IE7 that may screw up my system but is easily fixed or experiment with the new workarounds for MS's update and still be able to quickly revert back and get rid of the permanent change if it goes bad. It might even be useful for legitimate reasons too!

Acronis True Image 8.0 is comparable to Ghost 9.0 but True Image has that safe zone thing which is good for the recovery files so you don't have to go dig up a recovery CD if nothing else. It also has a more friendly user interface including wizards. I grabbed Symantec's LiveState 3.0 and Paragon's Drive Backup Pro 7.0 but didn't see anything I needed over the well reviewed True Image.

Thanks for ruining my Friday night Voro but in the long run it's going to be a huge timesaver the next time hacking the planet doesn't go as planned! Everyone should backup their OS drive or drive partition! This is almost as useful as Copernic (which just released version 1.6 with more improvements).