A fix for conjoined Dell laptop keys
(I’ve been exclusively making withdrawals from the First Lazyweb Bank of late, so here’s a deposit.)
About a week ago I opened up E’s mom’s laptop (a Dell Inspiron 2200) and began to enter a URL. Instead of www, it came out weweew. I soon found that a number of keys had all somehow become tied to their neighbors; pressing one would cause key events for both to be posted to the system, and both letters would appear. Trying to type w s x e d c might result in we sd xc ew ds cx, things like that. (Yes, I’m being extra-verbose here to try to help Google out.)
The keyboard was very clean; these keys were not physically stuck together, but rather electrically bound. Using the built-in hardware diagnostics (very handy; hold down fn while booting), I identified the following conjoined pairs of keys: 2 and 3; w and e; s and d; x and c; F1 and F2; and CAPS LOCK and F3.
I was afraid that a new keyboard would be required (which, fortunately, you can buy from Dell), but there was an easier fix. Some casting about the Dell support forums revealed that the keyboard connector ribbon has a predilection for coming loose underneath the keyboard, and that re-seating it can fix problems like these. Armed with Dell’s keyboard removal instructions, I pulled out the thin little ribbon, dusted it off, slid it carefully back in, and put the system back together.
And it now types www again.