Could a broken keyboard shut down a computer?

I'm working on a laptop here. I know the laptop has a messed up left arrow key, so it does weird things. Could it shut down a computer?

I haven't opened any applications, and it seems to be just sitting there happily running. It has shut down on solitaire, and on a hard drive check utility.

When it shuts down, it's like you pulled the power from it.

Troy

Well, I guess we will find out. I have another keyboard to install on the machine, so we will know shortly.

Troy

According to Arthur it can!!! (also the keyboard is attached to the mouse for some reason )

[edit on 14-1-2010 by nick_napalm]

check your battery, and there might something be wrong with your laptop motherboard, or not. you might wanna consider bringing it to a service center.

I have seen it happen on desktops. With a laptop, all bets are off. Everything is sandwiched so closely together and anything askew can foul it up.

How did plugging in an external one work?

Thanks, that's what I need to remember to do. Run it with an external keyboard.

The extra keyboard was one (actually goes to the laptop) that had coke spilled on it, but it also has a messed up "Enter" key, even though I was able to free up the keys by washing it and liquid wrenching it.

Troy

If I may share my experience, the last 2 or 3 instances where a computer would just shut off were due to overheating issues.
You probably have lint and dust crammed in the the ventilation grills of the laptop and it's overheating the micro.
Try placing the laptop an inch or two above the table surface where it has planty of room to breathe.
It may still shut off on you and if it takes twice as long to do so, then you are on the right track.

[edit on 19-1-2010 by Alxandro]

I don't know what it is. I don't think the machine always shut down. You could run it for a while sometimes. It shut off one time at the time I double clicked on a solitaire card. But, later on I was able to play numerous plays with no shut down problem.

I did try blowing it out with my lungs.

We'll have to wait and see if the problem continues with the way it is now.

Troy

reply to post by cybertroy


feel the bottom of your laptop after a while of use. see if its hot to the touch. also the fan may be busted (this is quite common for older laptops). you can try feeling the power supply also, it should be warm but not extremely hot.

your vid card could also be dying. you could try cleaning out the fan with canned air, make sure you use the straw. i would also clean it with the laptop off.

in any case now would be a good time to save anything important to a usb drive.

Thanks for all the advice guys.

I think the hard drive and memory are good. I guessed on the power supply, even jiggled the connection to the laptop.

The fan is still running. Blows out hot air.

I guess maybe it could be a problem with the thermal grease between the CPU and heat sink, assuming it does have grease. Some machines have some type of material between the two, that I'm sure serves the same purpose.

I didn't really see any errors pop up, it's just "click," dead.

I did run a CPU tester on it. It just runs some sort of processing task(S) over and over. But, at that time stuck keys were throwing in symbols, so I am not sure.

Some computer problems are hard to diagnose if you don't have the equipment. If I had some way to test the power supply, or had a spare. I have a tester for desktops, 20-24 pin, plus the extra 4 pins that you see on some boards. But no laptop supply tester. I would say it's either on the board, the CPU, or the power supply. Or, perhaps some oddball thing with the hard drive, that my software didn't catch.

Troy

Troy

If it really is related to overheating (which like Alxandro has been the case for me with those instances of sudden shutdown), you can find out quite easily by giving your CPU (and/or GPU - videocard) something to crunch. The most fun way to do that is to play a game too heavy for your laptop (a demo of a new game :]?). If the laptop shuts down, repeat a few times too see if it's consistent. If it doesn't, then you know what isn't the problem ;] Basically if your laptop keeps running happily, then your case fans, cpu speed (overclocking and all), grease (yep! it's there, or should be) and cpu fan are just fine.

Actually it wouldn't surprise me if it doesn't crash, as you mentioned playing solitaire and having it crash.. that's not exactly a situation to expect overheating. Maybe if you've modded the laptop to use a heavier video card or if one of the case fans stopped spinning - but still, solitaire?

If it does crash consistently when running a heavy program, it might not be due to overheating; it could still be the power supply. If I'm not mistaken, most modern videocards, CPU's and harddisks can 'power down' when not fully in use. Conversely this means that running a heavy program would spike the voltage load (sp?gr?).
To discern between overheating and over'load'ing, you could simply check what the laptop's temperatures are (as reported through either Windows apps before the crash, or the BIOS after rebooting). Depending on the CPU type, you may get as high as 80C / 176F, but right around that temperature thiings tend to get dangerous ( ).

Hope that helps you to determine what's got your puppy down. Of course if you like to tinker around with thiings, you might see if you can get a cheapass power supply, grease and some fans from a second hand store and fix things for sure either way, good luck to thee!


[edit: somehow I read minefield instead of solitaire.. take that, Freud! ]


[edit on 21-1-2010 by scraze]

Originally posted by cybertroy
The extra keyboard was one (actually goes to the laptop) that had coke spilled on it,

So you could have coke in the laptop on the MB? That would be your problem, coke is nasty stuff cos 1 It's a liquid, 2 after it''s evaporated it's still a bunch of surgery goo and 3 it's corrosive...

It would be a good idea to get in side the laptop and very carefully clean the MB - but that's not something you should do unless your confident!

Personally I'd back up all the files you want to keep and not spend any more money on it! Time for a new computer

It's not my computer, by the way, been trying to fix it for somebody.

I just don't know with the price of laptops these days going down, that it's really worth digging too much. The price of a keyboard for this Sony on E-bay was $99, and I didn't see any used ones. HP and Dell keyboards can be bought for $14.

The Coke had gotten into the DVD drive as well, so it is hard to tell where else it got. It was spilled on the machine a good while back. But, it's been running for a long time after that, with no problems.

It's not really a consistent problem that I can tell. I do need to run some kind of CPU stress test on it again, if he decides to try and fix it. That is, if the problem continues.

Desktops are much easier to work on, that's for sure. I have a motherboard tester, but the manual is very difficult for me to understand. Not very user friendly.

Troy

Yeah, looking at the price of laptops, I really start to doubt how much it's worth fixing them, other than keeping them out of the dump. About $300 and you can have one of those nice little portable netbooks. Those are really cool in my eyes. Just something handy to tote around, surf the net an stuff.

Of course they are worth fixing if you are fixing it for yourself. But taking it to a shop, the cost can add up. Buying some of the parts used keeps the cost down though.

Troy