Computer question: what the hell did I do to my keyboard?

Factual Questions
1

About two weeks ago, the keyboard on my Gateway laptop started returning gibberish when I typed on it.

Some characters are OK, but others are mixed up ( e.g., the “j” key returns the numeral “1”).

Some experimenting narrowed the problem down to the function key – when I hold it down and type, everything is OK.

But if I type without holding the function key down, “hello” becomes “he336”.

Did I accidentally hit some combination of keys that changed some softkey settings?

Or has the keyboard hardware died?

TIA.

2

Sounds like you activated the 10-key number keypad. When you hold the function key down, it reverts to the normal keyboard. In effect, you have changed the keyboards default settings to numbers. I don’t happen to have a Gateway laptop, so I don’t know how to change it back, but I’m fairly certain that’s what has happened.

3

Yeah, that’s it. Either RTFM, or check your function keys around F5 for one that also has a little grid that might look like the number pad on a full 101 board if you squint. Hit Fn-F(Whatever-That-Key-Was) and things are back to normal.

4

Yeah, you have numlock on.

5

I guess it could also be labeled Pad Lock

6

Yes, it was ‘numlock’ – specifically:

J=1
K=2
L=3
U=4
I=5
O=6
(etc – all numbers in blue).

The scroll key has the ‘padlock’ icon in blue. I pressed this key and the problem went away.

Thanks to all.

7

Gateway keyboards used to have another interesting trick: there was a key that, once you pressed it, would let you remap keys (first keypress = key to be remapped; second keypress = key to map the first one to) until you want back and pressed the remap-function key again to tell it you were done. (Don’t ask me whose brilliant idea this was!)

You had it way easy with just numerical keypad :slight_smile:

8

you… um… went two weeks without trying to press the numlock key? dude… don’t be a pussy.