Laptop Key Problem

[Tech Writer]

Ben and Alex, thanks for the quick replies!

Just to clarify...  This machine hasn't run Windows for a couple of years. 
It was still under the HP warranty when XP SP2 came out and all those disk 
errors began.  So HP replaced the disk, ran diagnostics, etc.  After they 
claimed the hardware was okay, there were still problems with XP.  After 
that, I've had Red Hat and SuSE both run just fine on this laptop.

The main reason I'd planned to head down to the InstallFest (which I never 
made it to because of these errors) was because I've never gotten the 
wireless to work.  Unfortunately, during my attempt to install Ubuntu this 
past weekend is the first time I've ever had problems with the print-screen 
key.

Is there some on-line location I get the MS-DOS diagnostics to put onto a 
disk and see if there's something else I'm not seeing?

Peg


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alex Hewitt" <hewitt_tech at comcast.net>
To: "GNHLUG" <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 9:46 AM
Subject: Re: Laptop Key Problem


>
> On Tue, 2007-11-13 at 09:33 -0500, Ben Scott wrote:
>> On Nov 13, 2007 9:25 AM, Tech Writer <TechWtr at handspun.com> wrote:
>> > I actually tried to remove the Print Screen key, but that didn't help.
>>
>>   I would suggest booting some MS-DOS-based diagnostic software, and
>> seeing if the system is getting keyboard scan codes for the key.
>>
>> > ... because XP SP2 kept giving hard drive errors (even after HP 
>> > replaced the disk!)
>>
>>   That makes me suspicious.  It's entirely possible that the system
>> has some *other* problem (bad RAM, CPU, core logic, etc.) that is
>> causing general craziness, including bad disk I/O and bogus key scan
>> codes.  Try running other diagnostics (like MemTest86+) and see what
>> you find.
>>
>> -- Ben
>
> One problem I've run into with Windows on laptops is an infrequent disk 
> I/O paging error. The hard error (it shows up as a
> red coded error in the system event log can be caused by incorrect wakeup 
> after suspend or hibernate. In other words it
> isn't really a disk error but rather incorrect handling of the paging file 
> during wake-up. One way to tell is looking for the
> event log start message in close proximity to the disk error (usually 
> within 10-20 events). It took me a while to figure this
> out because I started looking for a pattern that might occur on or near 
> the disk errors and I noticed that the error always
> showed up after I woke up the system.
>
> -Alex
>
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