Long beeps at boot - problems with keyboard

[Luke88]

Hello,

 

I seem to be happening random problems with an Acer laptop booting up.

 

When trying to boot the laptop one of the following will happen:

 

1  --  Long beeps prior to booting Window (just after the BIOS screen) and will not go any further.

2  -- PC will boot into Windows but the as soon as it gets to the log on screen it starts typing random numbers and letters. Sometimes I can type but for every key I press about 5 random characters appear.

Laptop is running Windows 8.1 without any recent hardware or software changes. I have tried booting into a virtual machine and BIOS, and the random character thing also happens there which leads me to believe this to be a hardware.

 

Just as I was about to attach a USB keyboard to test this, I rebooted the machine and it booted up without any problems at all. This first happened last weekend and then just randomly started working the next day and the same seems to be happening.

 

Not sure if anyone has had this issue before or can recommend anything to try? Would replacing the laptop keyboard be the next option?

 

Other than the issue above the laptop runs fine so I am keen to fix this rather than replace the machine.

 

Thanks

Luke

[zhangm Supervisor]

Would replacing the laptop keyboard be the next option?

That sounds like a reasonable next step. You can also disconnect the onboard keyboard and just use a USB one to test whether the gibberish output is causing the boot problems, if the issue becomes reliably reproducible.

[The Evil Overlord]

I was just about to suggest what Zhangm posted, I would also check to make sure the keyboard ribbon is properly seated and clean, might just be as simple as that

[helpifIcan]

OR maybe something got into the keyboard liquid or solid. If solid try tilting the PC upside down and dislodging if the issue returns. If liquid maybe it finally dried up.