I am stuck in a weird situation. I am using HP X360 laptop and I have installed Linux MX, Debian 12, Manjaro and Windows. When I type:
“a” it types “ad”,
“d” it types “ad”
“q” it types “qe”
“e” it types “qe”
“z” it types “zc”
“c” it types “zc”
“1” it types “13”
“3” it types “13”
I ran Windows troubleshoot, checked that the drivers are updated, uninstalled the keyboard and restarted my laptop but nothing is fixing the issue. The keyboard is behaving the same in all OS’s installed on my system i-e Debian 12. Linux MX, Manjaro, and Windows. It was working perfect the last night when I shut down my laptop. Please help resolving the issue
Sounds like the hardware.
I’ve seen this with liquid spills on the keyboard and similar situations.
For now (and assuming everything is dry and not in danger) you can try with another keyboard plugged in to see if that will work for you.
And if you are handy with a screwdriver you might try opening things up and giving a clean … who knows maybe theres some twigs in there pressing multiple things. Crazier has happened.
Many years ago I was working on my partners macbook (which ended up being the last) … they were walking with a relatively full glass of water and stepped in such a way that some of the liquid sort of ‘shook’ out of the glass … not very much, could have only been a few spoonfuls maximum, but some of it landed squarely on the keyboard.
I did my best to power it off quickly and dry. Then waited an anxious while to make sure nothing was wet. The machine surprisingly worked for the year or so it continued to be used.
But always with an external keyboard or lots of tedious “type, backspace, type, backspace…” if mobile. Because z=z1, x=x2, c=c3, and so on.
I’ve had it happen here recently when squirting window cleaner on a paper towel. The squirt was powerful — it was from up close — and bounced off of the paper towel and onto my keyboard. I wiped it off immediately, but the result was strange characters when pressing certain keys, similar to what you describe. For instance, the Ctrl key, when pressed by itself, produced a Yen (¥) symbol, if I remember correctly.
I then swapped out the keyboard for a black PS/2-connected one — this one here is USB-connected and off-white, but they are the same model — but when I cleaned it with a too damp cloth a few weeks later, the cleaning fluid ran in between the keys and it did a similar thing. Pressing U produced a literal Unicode sequence, “U+some-number”.
I had left the USB keyboard drying in my living room, and I had first also taken a hairdryer to it. So I am using the USB keyboard again right now, and it’s all peachy.
But of course, this is a desktop computer, and my keyboards are Cherry G81-3000 models — they can take a beating. A laptop keyboard is much frailer, and in addition to the keyboard circuitry, there’s also the motherboard underneath the keyboard, all packed together in a very compact form factor. So cleaning that out and having it properly drying out is going to be harder.
It’s doable, or at least, it’s possible to salvage such a keyboard. But it could be hit-and-miss, especially if it’s a laptop.
I had the same behaviour on my cherry cymotion master solar (linux version). The problem was the batteries that started leaking and polluted the PCB of the keyboard. I cleaned everything with soda water and a old toothbrush. Until today, it’s still working. Although I’m still wondering if it should be possible to design a new PCB and use QMK in case of…
