Hooked hotkeys

[time]

One of our PCs suddenly behaves strangely when pressing either 'F' or 'T'. It's as if the Windows key is being held down, but it's not, because other standard Winkeys (eg. 'E', 'R', etc) don't do anything unless the Windows key is also depressed.

So 'F' launches the Search window and 'T' launches Outlook.

The two hotkeys are being hooked in different ways. The 'T' key still outputs the character while the 'F' key doesn't. I was able to disable the 'F' key by disabling all Winkeys with TweakUI (it's an XP box), but the 'T' key is unstoppable; I rebooted in Safe Mode and it still does it!

I've run a nice little utility called ActiveHotkeys which shows which key combinations are registered by something, but 'F' and 'T' come up empty.

I can't see anything untoward in HijackThis or the other process monitors I loaded, and the AntiVirus software is sanguine. I suspect an Explorer DLL, but there's about 100 of them, so I'm not sure where to begin.

Any ideas? I need a plan of attack.

 

[LunarMist]

Try another keyboard?

 

[CougTek]

Remove the Windows key. See if the rubber below it is stuck or misplaced. Wash it with alcohol (not Calsberg). If it doesn't work, do what Mooner said.

 

[time]

As I said, it's not the Windows key sticking because it doesn't happen with any of the other standard Winkeys (which worked correctly when the Windows key was pressed).

However, Lunar hit the nail on the head! I tried a keyboard without a Windows key and there was no problem. While I was staring at the problematic keyboard, I realized that it's a 'multimedia' keyboard with shortcut keys for, amongst other things, Email ...

The penny dropped: it's not a key sticking, but some kind of electrical problem with the key matrix. So pressing the 'T' was also triggering the Email button, and 'F' was also triggering the Windows key. That's how I got two key presses for the 'T', but only one for the 'F' (the Windows key modifier suppresses the original character).

This also explains why the PC had been restarting instead of shutting down. It's set to power on with a key press and the keyboard is probably telling it some random unused multimedia key has been pressed.

I hate it when I get caught out by making assumptions at the start of troubleshooting.

 

[LunarMist]

When I read your post and looked at the T and F being adjacent I figured it was not a coincidence.