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My computer thinks the CTRL key is being pressed

Last response: in Computer Peripherals
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Last night there were a bunch of people at my house and a few of them them were using my computer and somewhere along the line someone must have did something to screw it up. It now seems that my computer thinks the CTRL key is being held down. Everytime I click on something or press a button, my computer acts as if the CTRL button is pressed. Maybe Im missing something simple but for the life of me I cant figure out why its doing this. Plus it worked fine that morning. I am using windows XP home and have a microsoft natural 6000 wireless keyboard and mouse. Here are the things I've tried:

pressing the ctrl key
pressing both ctrl keys together
holing the crtl key (s) for few seconds
Virus and spyware - both clean
I unistalled the Intellipoint/type software
Played with accessibility options
rebooted many times by itself and after making any changes
reinstalled drivers
tryed a different keyboard and mouse - both USB and ps/2

Sticky keys is also unchecked. Nothing has worked. What else can I do? Its driving me crazy and my computer is basically useless right now. Also, as a side note, I opened MS word this morning and I got a warning saying "Word has detected you are holding down the CTRL key. Do you want to stard Word in safe mode?" I guess that pretty much confirms that my computer thinks I have the key held down. I have also tried using the system restore, however, it will not allow me to click on an earlier date. I click on a date and nothing happens. Your help is greatly apprieciated.

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Do you know if your keyboard was dropped on the floor? If there were a couple of people using it, there is a change that there could be a piece of debris stuck underneath the key and holding the key down.

Do you know if your keyboard was dropped on the floor? If there were a couple of people using it, there is a change that there could be a piece of debris stuck underneath the key and holding the key down.

I have the same problem since last night. Did a bit of investigation and found the following: 1) the problem does not occur on a virtual PC running on the same machine. 2) The problem seems to start after I open internet explorer needs some more investigation). So I don't believe there is a hardware defect because of 1), I'm suspecting a malicious piece of code. I ran a full virus scan last night but it did not find anything suspicious.
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I have the same problem. Have a Toshiba Satellite laptop from 2003/2004 which surprisingly has been working perfectly fine, until this problem occurred.

Details: Any application I open the computer acts as if the Ctrl key is pressed and if I press any key it does not let me type, instead responds to the command.

Example: On MSWord, Ctrl+H gives "Find and Replace", Ctrl+K gives "Insert Hyperlink" and so on so forth.

Does anyone know what might be going on.

Additionally, yesterday we were able to create a guest account and that let us use the computer normally for a couple of minutes but then the keyboard started doing the same stuff on for the "guest user" as well.

Tried to use an external keyboard and that did the same thing as well.

Please let me know if you have any ideas.

Thank you.

hi there i hav the same problem, im using on-screen keyboard now coz my keybd isnt working either.this has happened to me on n off v mysteriously. since ur post was 2 yrs ago, hav u solved the prob. if yes, can u email me the solution?
amysarchive@yahoo.co.uk

thank you v much...

This was a tough one. I had the same thing happen with one of my desktops and was actually able to recreate the problem after fixing it.

Pardon my below troubleshooting techniques, but I was a submarine electronics technician for 20 years and can't help it. I loved my job!

I just had a hunch it was a USB problem because after looking online, everything else I thought it could be had already been tried, so I went from there. I unplugged everything USB except the mouse and added a PS2 keyboard. The problem remained, but eliminated the keyboard as the problem.
I then plugged the mouse into a PS2 adaptor. The problem was gone, proving it was not a mouse issue.
I reconnected the USB keyboard and still no problem.
I then reconnected the original USB (wireless) mouse and the problem returned, proving it was a USB problem with the mouse.
I was still scratching my head when it hit me to try a different mouse in the USB port. It cleared the problem and I was then able to reinstall the original mouse without recreating the problem.

So to make the above process shorter, just swap mouses.

Simple fix - tough problem - still don't know why it happened, but it is clearly a problem with how the USB was interptreting the mouse signals.

I have a Toshiba Satellite notebook too, so obviously it's a problem with this make. The same thing happens to me. What I do is click Ctrl + Alt + Del and it stops it. It'll come up again later on, but it gets rid of it in the mean time. Let me know if it works for you.

Aloha, Do you have any other solutions as this is happening to me, except I did not have a mouse or any USB devises plugged in. When I plugged in a PS keyboard, it did the same thing.


Hal_Submariner said:
This was a tough one. I had the same thing happen with one of my desktops and was actually able to recreate the problem after fixing it.

Pardon my below troubleshooting techniques, but I was a submarine electronics technician for 20 years and can't help it. I loved my job!

I just had a hunch it was a USB problem because after looking online, everything else I thought it could be had already been tried, so I went from there. I unplugged everything USB except the mouse and added a PS2 keyboard. The problem remained, but eliminated the keyboard as the problem.
I then plugged the mouse into a PS2 adaptor. The problem was gone, proving it was not a mouse issue.
I reconnected the USB keyboard and still no problem.
I then reconnected the original USB (wireless) mouse and the problem returned, proving it was a USB problem with the mouse.
I was still scratching my head when it hit me to try a different mouse in the USB port. It cleared the problem and I was then able to reinstall the original mouse without recreating the problem.

So to make the above process shorter, just swap mouses.

Simple fix - tough problem - still don't know why it happened, but it is clearly a problem with how the USB was interptreting the mouse signals.

Anonymous

Hi I have the same problem on my laptop. I tried to re-install windows and the problem was there during the instulation which was a pain, but I managed to get through with some crazy user names thanks to alt!! Then I found I could tempareraly get rid of the problem if I hit ctrl alt alt ctrl on the on screen keyboard. But after every reboot tje problem came back. So I then assumed still a windows problem so I tried to put Linux on but I still have limited keyboard control!! Is it a bios problem? Does anyone have any ideas??

I suspect Java.
Because I delete jusched.exe in task mangaer, and fixed temporary.

Even after delete Java(TM) 6 Update 17 , I have the problem yet.
But it become valid that Ctrl + Alt + Delete fix this problem mysteriously.

sorry bad English;

OS : Vista home basic 32bit
Anonymous

I know for sure it is a USB issue with the USB mouse. If you pull up the On-Screen Keyboard application you can see the CTL key is pressed and stuck on. If you unplug your USB mouse then it goes away. If you plug-in the USB mouse again it will come back eventually - the problem is not with the mouse but instead Microsoft internal USB driver support and the USB device are not playing well together - it took me a full day to solve this - very frustrating but this is 100% the fix.

I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM, MY COMPUTER THOUGHT "CTRL" BUTTON IS PRESSED. RECENTLY I FOUND OUT THAT KEYBOARD CABLE IS DAMAGED. TODAY I FIXED THE CABLE AND NOW IT WORKS PERFECT!!!
Anonymous

hi all, i accidentally found the solution.

go to regional option, change the keyboard layout to something else, in my case i change to Malay, with UK settings.

and now im using the same keyboard and pc to type this! hope this helps~
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