Lagging keyboard; missing keystrokes

Question

I'm on Mint 17.3 on Toshiba Satellite L500, and all of a sudden (possibly following an update), my keyboard started to act really quirky.

Some keystrokes are received with a lag, some are not, and some get doubled. This isn't tied to any particular keys.

Any ideas about what the problem might be and how to diagnose it?

This looks like a hardware/driver issue -- I get the behavior in virtual consoles too, and an external USB keyboard works fine. Unfortunately, using an external keyboard with a laptop isn't very practical.

Answer 1

I didn't expect it to, but the advice from http://forums.toshiba.com/t5/Keyboards-Touchpads/Toshiba-Satellite-L500-Keyboard-not-working/td-p/160306 namely:

Here is the fix for the keyboard malfunction:

1. Turn off computer, disconnect the power cord, remove the battery.
2. Press the Power On button for 10 seconds
3. Replace battery and/or connect power cord.
4. Turn On computer + immediately press F2 key repeatedly
5. Press F9 then press Enter
6. Press F10 then press Enter

by user thunderbolt appears to have fixed my problem.

Hope somebody finds it useful.

Answer 2

Most probably this is temporary problem related to battery.

Shutdown, remove battery, boot up.

If all is fine try to put battery back. Again... shutdown, put battery back, boot up.

If all still works than you are fine. If problems with keyboard/mouse are back, replace the battery with the new one.

This issue is not restricted to Toshiba laptops, but general issue that can happen on all brands.

Answer 3

Try a static discharge of the computer. This will solve general hardware problems. If that won't solve your problem, you might try to update all packages from software manager again, if that won't solve too, you should try to download a different distro and burn it to an USB and then try to boot that USB up, check this. If none of these worked for you, it might be some motherboard error or sth related like that

Answer 4

Our Tosh Satellite L755D kept lagging on entering text, sluggish running, cursor jumping around. I tried the battery out trick here described, but no improvement. Another site suggested updating the BIOS, so I went to Toshiba.com and downloaded their BIOS, which was in fact the same version as installed. I installed the downloaded BIOS, re-booted and now the laptop is working normally again. Worth trying if you still have problems after removing the battery.