HP “Shift+@” fix

I have an HP Pavillion dv5224nr laptop computer, I had a different dv5000 series laptop before this one (which was sent back for support due to an accidental liquid problem and I got to pick a new one out of stock to replace it –BestBuy’s best “insurance” program for electronics pays off–) and my husband has a dv5215us laptop … I am writing about them because of a problem I’ve seen with all three, and it’s plainly annoying but not world ending …

1. Sometimes when typing, in any program, something happens, what I am not sure, but it’s “as if” the “cap lock” button is “ON” (but it’s not) and so suddenly in the middle of typing all the regular (lower case) text is in CAPS (upper case) and the CAPS (upper case) are in regular (lower case). It is quite annoying, and I have never been able to figure out WHY it happens, but I have figured out, quite by accident, HOW to RESET it so that the keyboard strokes are normal again.

So, in practice, it goes like thIS, WHILE TYPING SUDDENLY lOWER cASE IS uPPER cASE SO TO FIX IT I GO: “Shift+@” and then Lower Case is Lower Case again, and Upper Case is Upper Case again.

So doing that I just back out the “@” symbol to erase “fixer” from my text.

This is something I haven’t seen documented anywhere online, but it is the case of being a problem on all three dv5000’s we’ve had in this house since 2006 and it’s the only thing short of “restarting win xp” that I know works.

I might have seen a Q&A that the Q reference this same problem, or something quite close, and the A was “you need to reinstall the system with the hp software … ” HA HA HA! and something like “Make sure to update all your software, win xp, drivers, etc.” as if that’d do it, it’s a problem in HP keyboard software, I bet, and it has never been addressed, as far as I can tell.

This problem comes in factory setup. Reinstall doesn’t fix it. It’s something in the keyboard software it seems, as I said before. I could make an issue of it with Support, but I don’t because I cannot replicate the problem on purpose, and I know how to “quick reset” it and I just do it and am now writing about it to aide anyone else that might be having this problem.

I also can not abide the stupidity of “Support” for any product usually, especially computer products … they talk to me/you as if you are a novice stupid user, and that irks me to no end. There’s no way with any of them, thus far to this point in my life, to by-pass the dumb-dumb “did you …” questions, the step 1, step 2, step 3, troubleshooting brochure-fixated support workers (Where are the creative analytical problem solvers in these departments! “Press 1 for basic step by step dumb help, press 7 for creative problem solving help (jump right to what your problem is and get the info to fix your problem in 2 to 10 seconds)” ) so I have never “called” or “emailed” HP Support about this. (As I wrote above a bit, that I did find, once a long while ago, some Q&A online about this sort of thing and was disgusted with the Support A in reference to it.)

Now, I do not know if this problem is only related to HP’s or in particular HP Laptops, or more particularly only HP dv5000’s — but I do know it’s out-of-the-box with all three dv5000’s we’ve had in this house, and the first one that had it I did have occasion to “reinstall” the software, and that didn’t aide the problem (though something else was the reason I reinstalled in the first place) and all three dv5000’s do have updated software, most definitely.

2. Another problem that my hubby has on his dv5215us is that in Firefox, when typing into a text box on a message board, or any of the Firefox boxes for url, search, etc. SOMETIMES this happens: suddenly the FIND box opens on the browser and anything he types goes in that box, no matter that he puts the cursor back in the place he WANTS the text to go, it continually puts itself into the FIND box.

It’s something that seems to go away, but not exactly due to any certain thing. I have never had that happen when I’m working on my computer, and don’t know why it happens to him, but it does on and off, and I know that at times I have suggested he shut all Firefox instances, and that hasn’t aided him when trying with Firefox again, but sometimes it does. Another time or two or three I had him shut all Firefox instances, then open IE (yuck) and use that to navigate the web a bit, then shut that and try Firefox, that did seem to work a couple of times, but another time it didn’t.

I am reminded of that problem for him since it just happened, and he navigated away from the site he was on and then went back, with the same browser instance, and all was fine on the retry. FWIW

I don’t know if he tried “Shift+@” for his “Find” problem … but I want him to try that next time to see what happens right away when the problem crops up.