Thread: "Tab" behavior broken...

  1. #1
    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
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    "Tab" behavior broken...

    For some reason my tab is not working on my Windows 7 based laptop. It's not a broken key because Alt+Tab works fine, attempts to pick up the "Tab" key by any application that lets me 'set keys' to an action also works fine. It even works fine in an RDP environment (though not TeamViewer)... however, when I'm working directly on the laptop, I cannot tab through text fields on any application and I cannot insert a tab character in a text editor.

    I did some testing in a javascript event logger and I noticed the Tab key is only registering a "keyup" event and not a "keydown" or "keypress" event. I'm not sure Tab is supposed to register a "keypress" event but I'm pretty sure it is supposed to register a "keydown" event which might be the root of my problem.

    The other weird thing is the On Screen Keyboard application behaves the exact same way and causes the same problems in all instances as my regular keyboard.

    I couldn't find any solutions on the internet. Anyone have any idea what might be going on?
    Sent from my iPadŽ

  2. #2
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    That Sly, I think is the weirdest computer related thing I ever heard. It tops it all. Sorry for not offering a solution, but... wow! I'm just...

    I'll think about it and what could cause this behavior. But that's just weird...

    Of the top of my head:

    1.
    One would think there's some rogue mapping going on. But I'm doubtful, since the key does work normally on all other instances. In any case, check your registry at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Keyboard Layout". You should see only the (default) entry. If you see a "Scancode Map" key, save its value somewhere else, so you can later reproduce it if something goes wrong, and delete that key from the registry.

    2.
    Try to change to a different keyboard layout. Say, german. If the problem goes away maybe you may have a corrupt keyboard layout DLL. These DLLs are under C:\Windows\System32 and start with KBD followed by whatever alphanumeric code microsoft (not ISO, microsoft apparently thinks they know better) they gave the country. US keyboard layout is KBDUS.DLL. In any case, you cal always check the files names under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Keyboard Layouts" (notice it's layouts, not layout as above).

    3.
    You hit one of those impossibly rare situations predicted by quantum theory with astronomically low probabilities, like water stopping from flowing (quantum possibility of that happening is extremely low as one might expect). Quantum Probability Bugs are best solved by shutting down and restarting your computer. But I suspect you have already done that. That being so, you could be experiencing a quantum impossibility loop in which a quantum improbable event repeats itself indefinitely. Extremely rare. Much more than water stopping from flowing. Improbable Quantum Loops are best solved by reinstalling the operating system.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  3. #3
    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
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    Hmmm, well, I managed to solve it... unfortunately, it's fairly anti-climactic, even though I'm not sure how or why it changed.

    I narrowed the problem down to the synergy+ (which is a network keyboard/mouse sharer) service that was running on my computer. This is probably something I should have disabled more early in my search but I didn't think of it. When I dug into the settings of synergy, I noticed that my key mapping for locking the cursor to the current screen had changed from the menu key to the tab key. Remapping that fixed the problem. I'm not sure how it changed, however... I don't recall updating synergy+ any time recently and now, for some reason, their mapping options seem to refuse to recognize the menu key anymore. I can honestly only assume I did a software update at some point not too long ago which broke that functionality and caused the software to change the key mapping to something else it could understand. Perhaps I need a break from the computer. Perhaps I should step outside... hmm... what is this wonderful ball of warmth in the sky?

    Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, Mario.
    Sent from my iPadŽ

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